Way2slow

I was going to say you're lucky. Normally it bends and destroys it, if it's left locked down. Looks like yours might have been unlocked and just floating on the caster wheel.

The pull to the right was probably because you were going to slow or didn't have the motor trim out right. Once you get up on plane and at a reasonable speed so the boat has some bow lift and not riding stern heavy in the water, start bumping the trim up until the boat feels more like it's sliding along on the water and not plowing through it. If the speed is too slow where it's riding stern heavy, the motor is having to work harder and no amount of torque tab adjustment is going to help. When the boat is up on the pad, skimming along and the spray coming out the sides is behind the drivers seat then you should be able to get neutral steering. If you end up trimming it out to where you hear the motor change pitch, the tach, (if you got it working) increases but the speed doesn't (these are signs of cavitation and trimmed out too far) and the steering still has torque, then you might need to adjust trim tab.

a91 was the first year of the 60 degree Eagle block. 91 and 92 motors were probably closer to 200hp than 150, until Mercury cried fowl when the 150 fast strike was running side by side with their 200's. Now, was the motor rebuilt or did they install a remanufactured power head. If it was rebuilt, then you have the good motor as far as horse power, "BUT" they had a casting problem in the block. Where the voltage regulator mounts, the blocks were prone to crack and let water get into one of the top cylinders, cause the piston to melt down. This was a high percentage failure for the early eagle blocks. The right shop could tig weld them and they work fine afterwards, but you still had and engine to rebuild. Other than that, the motors have a reputation for being very good motors. As for the boat, I always recommend you have someone that knows what they are doing check the transom and floor for any signs of rot. It only takes a couple of years for a bolt that's not properly sealed to let enough water in to destroy a transom. That sounds like a lot of money for that old of a boat. Shoot, I'm thinking of selling my 1999 Javelin Renegade 20DC with a 225 on it and thinking about asking only half that price for it. After some surgery I had on my casting hand, I can no longer use most bait caster reels.

Want to get rid of the drowsy while sitting in a deer stand, have a red tail hawk attack the hat on your head. Luckily it was a cold morning and I had an insulated head cover on also but he took my bush cap off and I still felt his talons some. I had been there a couple of hours and kinda nodded off with my head bent over for a few minutes. I guess thought it was some kind of critter and wanted breakfast. Scared the crap out of both of us, and he dropped my cap on the ground.

Read the post I made in this topic; Evinrude 150XP Most all will apply to your motor as well, the 150 just has two more cylinders.

Forgetting to stow it when taking off does a pretty good job. The can even wash you and the boat down, all in one. Actually, I can't remember having ever cleaned mine.

US Composites sell two part flotation foam, no mater what you fill it with, nothing is going to make it more buoyant than air, so why not just seal the holes letting water in. Two things to consider foam adds weight, 2 to 4 pounds per qubic foot. Then you have the fun part of getting just the right amount in the cavity. If you get too much, and that stuffs expands about 10 fold, and it will bust it like a dropped water melon. If it can bust a fiberglass boat, it definitely will bust that plastic pontoon, and don't think for a second inside that plastic will keep it form expanding, it won't. Don't waste you money on the Great Stuff that comes in the spray cans, it does not dry if it can't get air and just make an expensive mess.

I don't have any experience with a 20' Skeeter, but have modified 3.0 OMC 200's on three Stratos 201's from the mid 90's. With a stock 200hp Johnson these boats ran between 58 and 61mph max with full tournament load and two people. I would think a 20' Skeeter would do about the same. Also, understand you could possibly have hull issues that could cause the boat to have slowed down and loading the motor more if it used to run faster at higher RPM. I've seen several boats that the trailer was not adjusted properly to fit the hull and over the years cause terrible distortions, hooks, and bows in the hull. I even owned one of those. That's when you need someone with the know how to check and blue print the hull. Notice, I said with the know how, some hull can be ruined by doing what one thinks looks good but it's not. I had a friend that thought he would blue print his Allison, which has a built in hook, and he took it out, totally the wrong thing to do. I spent a week reshaping his hull with fiberglass, body filler and a lot of sanding, to get it back to the way it was designed to be. There is a host of things that can cause a boat to loose RPM and speed, it all just a person with the skills going through the process of elimination to get it right. Those 201's I referred to, they went from the 60 mph to almost 80 when done with motor and setup, and still wearing those 200hp decals on the motor. Not bad for one of those old lead sleds.

When the first sentence start of saying Mercury usually don't even read the rest. My thoughts on the issue is the motor is terribly under powered or the prop is way too large. If it were mine, I wouldn't be comfortable with anything less than 5,800 rpm with my normal load. Fuel starvation usually causes a surge, it's not common for one to turn a steady RPM when starving for fuel. To keep in simple, first thing I would do would be a plug dump. That's shutting the motor off while holding WOT, after running WOT for about five minutes, running down the lake of course. Cut if off while heading toward the ramp and use TM, do not restart motor until plugs have been look at. All six should be even in color and depending on how good you EFI computer is, the can be almost white to paper bag brown. The key is ALL SIX should look identical, then you are trouble shooting something that affects all six cylinders but if, some light and some dark means things are not right somewhere. Too light is too lean, vacuum leak or something. Too dark, means too rich, low compression, bad plug, plug wire, coil, ignition etc. Run it on the hose or in a tank for about 10 minutes to warm up good, then do a leak down or compression test. One thing, don't assume your prop is good until you've tried a different one. I've seen props with a rolled edge that looked perfect to the naked eye.

I've never been on Jackson but one time and that was to help a friend of my that has a shop there to trouble shoot a strange problem he was having with a 200hp Johnson. From what I remember, to run WOT for five minutes, you are gonna be doing a big circle

Once one idles for a few minutes, it wipes anything you might be able to read off the plugs. To get a proper reading of the plugs, you need to run it WOT (Wide Open Throttle), down the lake of course, for about five minutes. Then, while still holding it wide open, switch the key off. Then pull the plugs out and look at them. About eh color of a brown paper bag or a little lighter is about right Without running EGT probes to read the exhaust temps, when they start getting white, it's too close to melt down. Now, with new plugs, it's hard to get a good reading on them. Those you have will give you the best, true indication. It's usually better to do this while you are heading toward the ramp or some place you can get out of the boat and get to the back. You can take the cover off, trim the motor all the way up and do it that way, just have a spare plug and wrench to put it in with. I know of more than one that has gone to the bottom of the lake leaning over the motor. When you do buy a new set, get Champion. If you are still running the oil injection, I might be a little rich but a two stroke naturally idles rich. and have to be run a little rich at lower rpm. If not, it will lean spit and cough, and cut off sometimes. Also, a slightly rich motors makes more torque. If you adjust carbs so it idles smooth, it will probably bog or be slow to come to get on plane.

Call the boat manufacturer and they will say use it. Call the motor manufacturer and they will say don't use it. Now, as for Mercury motors, I think Mercury only consider their brackets Tilt supports, not trailering supports and if they have one on their motor, it is NOT intended to be used to hold the motor up during trailer. As stated, you get into the same argument as the Ford, Chevy debate when I comes to the "Transom Saver". I have seen several times what they can do to a lower unit and I WILL NOT use one. There are too many better options available, but if I'm running an OMC with the support, I use that. Since I have nine different motors Mercs, Johnsons and Evinrudes, I use everything from a piece of board slid between the motor and mount, the flip down stand to the blocks that slide over the trim/tilt cylinder. I have a half dozen of those bars laying around the I've taken off boats I've bought as soon as I got them. Like chocolate and vanilla ice cream, everybody has their own preference.

Actually, the Johnson/Evinrude's built during that era were built to use that flip down support for trailering. It's designed to hold the motor at the proper angle to somewhat balance it on the transom. If your motor has the trailering support, use the one built into it. If you decide you want something, get anything that does not place a bar between the motor and the trailer like the Transom Saver does. Those can be bad news for a lower unit. There are plenty of other devices that don't use that bar.

Don't get too quick on what doctors tell you. About 15 years ago I had everything in place to build me a nice 40x60 building for a shop, storage and small guest apartment. Two days before I was to pick up the money, doctor told me my biopsy test came back positive for prostate cancer. We'll with that facing me, I backed out of building my dream building. Six months later they did another biopsy and said it was inconclusive. A year later, same thing. It was two years later when they finally said the first test was wrong, I did not have prostate cancer. By then, other things were going on that I didn't have the time to put into building my building. 15 years later, I still don't have a building and won't have because when I retired in 2011, that put a big dent in my free spending money.

I guess you read my response in that other post. To clarify the "over heating problem" you asked about. The is not an overheating problem as far as the motor running hot. You don't get a overheat indicator unless there is some kind of abnormal problem you have encountered. The heat problem is internal to the pistons. Which is caused by the way OMC routed the water around to sleeves. To fix that problem requires a modification of how the water enters, circulates around the sleeves and exits the motor.

Bigger jet in #2 carb is only a partial bandaid to help compensate for the bad water circulation these motors have. I always do the cooling mod that Al Stoker helped develop to fix that problem, but the motor has to be torn down to do it. Also, beware of most peoples cooling mod. There are only a handful of people that know how to do it the right way. Most that think they know because they've seen motors with the heads off but they, leave out a critical step that is actually the heart of the whole mod and unless you know about it, you would most likely never see it. I know because Stoker told me how to do it, the right way. OMC refused to do anything about it, even when Stoker advised them of the problem and the fix he came up with back in 1995, because it would require a lot of retooling. It was not until they came out with the 3.3L block they incorporated the cooling mod into it. The exhaust gas temps (EGT's) on that whole bank are off, it's just #2 is the worst. #2 runs about 50 degree F hotter than 1, 3 and 5, #4 runs about 30 degrees hotter and #6 runs about 20 degrees hotter. Running the larger jet to make it a little rich help cool that cylinder. If you try to put larger jets and 2 and 4, sometimes you will be too rich and cause #4 to start four stroking. The problem this all causes is the pistons getting that much hotter causes the ring locater pins to loosen and back out. Once they back out to the point they hang in the transfer port, it grenades the motor. Now, when you ask what else you can do to the motor, are you talking about to get more performance or just to help keep it running longer? Most performance mods are done during a rebuild but the right person with a die grinder can easily make that 200 a 300. One thing you can do is look at the butterflies in the carbs. If they have two screws holding them in, then you motor is truly a 200. If they have three screws holding the butterflies, your 200 is actually a 225 with 200 decals. OMC did that on a lot of the Venom 200's to make them sort of a 200HO, they just didn't say anything about. The only difference between the 200 and the 225 powerhead is the carburetor's. they used approx. a 1 3/8" venture on the true 200's and about 1 7/16" (actually 1.45") venture on the 225 and 250. If I remember right, it was the J200ST motors that had the 225 carbs on them. NOTE: I said the only difference is the carbs. It's actually the carbs with the throttle bodies. The carbs are nothing but the plastic body, the throttle bodies are the aluminum plate with the butterflies in them. If you try swapping out carbs, make sure you always get the throttle bodies that go with them. They made a design change around 1996 because the 92 to 95 carbs and intakes were near junk. They look almost alike but function totally different. With the larger carbs, the only thing it takes to make the 200 a 225HO/250 is increasing the size of the exhaust port to the same at the 225HO/250. All the extra money people paid to the 225HO/250 all they were paying for was a bigger exhaust port in the cylinder and a small relief port. A set of 50cc offset chamber heads kick in another 25- 35 hp. Blue printing it, they have extremely sloppy casting, is good for another 30 plus hp. Mine were usually 325hp + when done at 6,300 rpm and made enough torque to launch a heavy bass boat like it had booster rockets on it.

to check the tach, check the voltage on the grey wire, with the negative meter lead connected to battery negative with the engine running. I seems like it should be 10-12 volts. if the voltage is low, find the grey wire coming out of the rec/reg and check it there. Check it on AC and DC, I can't remember now of the top of my head which it is. Might want to check the ground and 12VDC to battery while you are checking.

I have found a number of his answers that are off by several thousandths every time and way I can run them. I assume that has to do with how he rounded and I rounded. That however is not a problem. It's almost impossible to measure and drill a hole that exact anyway. To compensate for that, you drill about a 3/16" pilot hole and then just start going larger little by little, checking the frequency each time, until you get the hole in tune. Bass302, I really appreciate all the effort you have put into my puzzle. What I'm doing for a work-around is I programmed all the formulas into my TI-84+ and just plug in numbers until I get something that works and I like for a finger hole size and space. A bit of a pain, but it gets me to the outcome I need The distance between the finger hole and the antinode or node determines the size finger hole. If the hole is too small it won't have much volume, if too large, you have trouble covering it with your finger. Also, if you are too close to the node or antinode, if it makes a note, it will sound terrible. Off by a 10th of and inch and you just ruined a flute you spent a lot of time and effort into making. Off by several thousandths and the whole size or spacing may no be usable, fingers can only stretch so far.

I have the Terrova with I-Pilot, that has the remote. A couple of years ago, the foot control messed up. I Tried to use it with the remote and that totally sucked. At the time they were wanting over $150 for the foot pedal. Since I was not real fond of the motor anyway, I took it off and put my MG back on. Well, last fall the MG started acting up so I drug out the Terrova and figured I could see if there was something I could repair. It ended being one of the little magnets had come out. I happened to find it stuck to one of the others in a place you couldn't see it at first look. A little epoxy and it's back on the boat. Still not real fond of it and still have not used the remote for but that one time I tried to use it what the foot pedal broke. I bass fish with both hands, and didn't have a third one to use that remote and the buttons were too small to lay it one the floor and us my foot. Now, I can see where under certain conditions and styles of fishing it could be useful, but when you are almost constantly on the move and make a few thousand cast a day, who wants to quit casting to press a button on a remote.

Fried plantains!!! I hope you're kidding, I doubt most southerners know what they are, much less tried them in a sandwich. We're talking bright yellow bananas and not even one of those that's partially green, those are hard and tend to be a bit bitter. Bright yellow. I slice mine down the middle long ways, then in half. If it's large slices of bread, all four pieces in one sandwich. If it's Colonial sandwich loaf, then only three fit so I fold the extra piece between another slice of bread and make 1 1\2 sandwiches. If they are smaller bananas, I just cut it and half and fold one slice of bread around each half, with the mayo of course. I was raised on Dukes, but never cared much for it, has a sweet flavor I never liked. I prefer Hellmann's. If they start turning dark, they get too soft and mushy, but don't throw them away. Let them sit another day or two and make banana nut bread out of them.

Inspect your wiring and hoses closely. The seem to love chewing up wiring and rubber. Even a small bite out of a spark plug wire can cause the insulation to breakdown and arc through. Causing that plug to misfire.

Bass302, thanks, to was a lot of work. It's taking me a little time to decipher all that and a little hard to understand being in the format you had to use to get it posted, but don't worry, I will get through it. I've tried several ways to get into my TI-84 Plus to see if that helps but I'm kinda rusty on programming that thing also. I do greatly appreciate the work you put into it though. Kev-Mo, the native Americans had elders with generations of knowledge that was passed down to them. Us dump*** white folks were too busy trying to kill them all to pick up on that, and to busy figuring out ways on how to rip off everyone else to take time to teach something if there wasn't money involved.

Baby Glocks make nice carry weapons. The G-27 packs and good punch and if you reload, you can make it fit what ever need you have. Then you could go with the G-29 if you want some real fire power in and smaller frame. I like the Glocks because they are small enough to conceal but big enough to still shot comfortably, and I have a rather large hand, like I wear a size 15 wedding band and have to buy XXL gloves. I can spread a little over 10" from tip of thumb to tip of little finger and still hold the baby Glock comfortable enough to shot accurately. I am a south paw but use the Gen3 right hand Glocks with no problem. However, I think the Gen4's are ambidextrous

It has to have mayonnaise on it. Peanut butter on one slice, Hellmanns on the other and the nanner in the middle. Mayo on just a peanut butter will help keep it from sticking to the roof of your mouth if you have that problem. Of course to me, a sandwich ain't a sandwich without the mayo on it. One thing, don't try a PB and pineapple. I love a pineapple and mayo sandwich, but pineapple and PB don't go well together

Don't worry, I think a whole lot of people have never even heard of a banana sandwich, much less with PB or PB&J. I think that's another one of those southern things. Kind of like grits for breakfast. Breakfast ain't breakfast without grits.