Way2slow

When I first went into the Air Force, I had a SSgt that was supposed to be training me on a particular radio. Going through the meter readings, it was DOA. An hour later, and him having most of the modules pulled out of the radio, I handed him the plug and asked it that wasn't supposed to be in an outlet? This was the same guy that stuck five fuses back to back into a radio, and it blowing everyone as fast as he stuck them in. Then sticks a #2 Philips in the hole and says when it quit smoking, it will show where the shorts at. I had an associates degree and a 1st Class FCC license with Radar Endorsement when I went in, so thankfully, I was able to recognize an electronics Dum***s when I saw one, and I met a lot of them during my carrier.

I usually run about a gallon of gas with 1.5 ounces of SeaFoam through my 225 Ficht, in the tank at 2,000 rpm, every six to eight weeks when not using it. About two months ago I went to do this when it was about 34 degrees outside. It wouldn’t start, and cranking kinda slow so I disconnected the negative cable from the battery, ran jumper cables from a TM battery to the cranking battery and reconnected the negative. Still wouldn’t. I check the plugs and it wasn’t firing. It was too cold to be messing with it so I gave up. Well, about three weeks ago, I tried again when it was a lot warmer and it was cranking over a lot faster. Still wouldn’t start and no fire to the plugs and the injectors were not firing. I’ve been the last three weeks looking for my service manual and diagnostics cable. The wife was happy because now the garage, one of the storage buildings and my computer/junk room are all nice and cleaned now, trying to find that service manual. I said my wife was happy, well that was until I told her that it was looking like the CPU was bad and it was going to cost approx. $700 to get it repaired. She commented “you had better find that manual”. Finely found it today. Started trouble shooting the electrical and saw the ignition/shut down relay was not energizing. Checking the grounding wire from the switches, it was at 3 ohms but when I turned the key off, it went to 0.2 ohms so made me believe the problem was not the ignition switch. I then go to check the kill switch and thought, why is the lanyard laying in the floor? Right there on the floor, with the clip still attached that goes in the kill switch. Put the clip back in the kill switch and the motor started right up. Two flipping months of agony, thinking I was going to have to shell out $700 for a CPU over a simple, dumb problem that should have been the first thing I checked.

One on the front? Yes, definitely. That one gets used way more than the one on the console. As for the quality, that's going to depend on your fishing style. If you are primarily a shallow water fisherman, less than 10' or so most of the time, it will probably be used more for just keeping track of the depth and looking for abnormalities and obstacles that might hold fish, so the quality can suffer a little. If fishing deeper, where you are actually watching for fish holding next to the bottom along channels and structure, then you need as good of a color unit as your budget will allow and I would look at one of the side scan units. I run a 5" mounted in the console, a 10" on a Ram, swing arm on the gunwall beside the drivers seat, and a 7" up front, all networked together so I can see any one from any position. For the past 25 years or so, I've used nothing but Lowrance so I can't comment on what brand or model would be best. When it comes to that, it's like ice cream, everybody likes a different flavor, that's why there are so many. Oh, I also forgot to mention, there are tons of Sonars, depth finders, LCD's, flashers, etc, but the only true "fish finder" is the proper lure on the end of your line, presented properly in the right place.

Just leave it in the receiver about a year without taking it out. The rust will probably tighten it up.

It's aluminum so most anything wrong would be easily repaired, except for a couple. Make sure the steering turns free and easy, bad steering cables can set you back a couple hundreds dollars. From the picture it looks like there is a motor control arm sticking up. If so, does it match the motor you plan to install, also make sure it moves back and forth freely. The next step is the biggie, has it been drilled for a motor? If so, take you about a 2" long 1/2" bolt with nut and a stack of washers, and a couple of wrenches to fit them. Put the bolt through one of the holes and tighten the nut down on it fairly tight, using the washers on each side so the threads don't bottom out. If the bolt pull down into the transom more than the thickness of one washer, it's most likely rotted and will need to be replaced. On some Aluminums that's not big deal, on others, it's a major deal and can cost you more than the cost of the boat to repair.

Personally, I don't use nothing but OEM shear pins in anything that runs one. As the name implies, they are basically your "fuse" that keeps from doing other damage when that moving prop comes in contact with an immovable object. Throw something in there with a higher shear strength, and the cost to repair the collateral damage, would buy a boat load of OEM pins.

Don't know there is a "BEST" they all do the job, just some do it differently than others. With that said, the only one I would run is the SE Sport. I run the 300, they didn't make a 400 10 years ago when I got mine so don't know anything about the 400. I like the looks and performance of the SE Sport's over the others. Also, I run mine on a fast a** boat, and used it to temporarily correct a prop problem, it's was a lot cheaper than another $800 prop. When you are making turns at high speeds, you don't want one of those whale tail looking things biting into the water and make the boat do things you ain't gonna like. I still run it on my high performance motors because it just makes the hole shot sooooo much better.

AJ, those fancy devices work fine, "IF, you park on concrete" a lot of us have to park ours on dirt and those fancy wheels don't role that easy then. Almost 3,500 pounds of boat, motor and trailer sitting on soft dirt, you hope you don't have to move it by hand. I have to put a flat, stepping stone under my trailer jack just so it doesn't bury the wheel four inches in the dirt after sitting a few weeks.

I bought one of the wired in models. Very easy to install the wiring, just finding a good place to mount the display proved to be the hardest part. For mounting the camera, I used a piece of 1" square tubing about 6" long. I drilled a hole for the camera mount and cut down that side about and inch so I could bend it down to adjust the angle, then mounted that between the bumper and tail gate, centered over the ball. The wiring harness have terminals on both ends so you can either connect it from under the dash or from the backup lights so it automatically comes on when you put it in reverse. Works great and cost me less than $50 for everything I bought the telescoping magnet mounts and yellow balls years ago. By the time I dug them out of the tool box and got them stuck in a place that they would stay, I could already have the trailer connected. Like JFrancho said, with a little practice you can back up to it just fine, and that's fine if you are just backing up to the same trailer, I rarely missed my connecting point for my Javelin far enough that I had to get back in the truck and move it again. My problem is I have about 1/2 dozen trailers and some, like the ones on the jon boats, are too narrow to even see in the mirrors when backing up to them. I installed mine a couple of years ago and wished I had done it when they first came out.

Does the boat have a water pressure gauge? If not it should. Second, is it not peeing in the drive way on a hose. or is it not peeing at the lake fully in the water or a test tank. If it's not peeing on a hose, that's a common problem. Muffs and hoses sometimes won't deliver the water volume needed to make it pump enough water to push it out the pisser. Take it to the lake and try it. Now, if it's not peeing at the lake, then you see what the water pressure is doing. When the boat is up on plane, it should be running over 16 psi, and at much speed it should be over 20 and close to 30 psi, If the water pressure is good, whether it's peeing a stream or not shouldn't be a problem. Just a stopped up pisser.

Any dream boat of mine, the very first thing on the list about all others, a clear title in my filing cabinet. If I had to make boat and insurance payments, I couldn't afford to use it.

I guess it's time to step on toes and hurt some feelings. NO WATER COOLED ENGINE I know of, runs dry until the thermostats open. The motor would melt down before they did. The water comes into the motor, completely circulates around the cylinders and then out through the thermostats. All water cooled motors (vehicle and boat) I know of have a small amount of bypass water built in so the air and some water can escape past the thermostats so as it warms up, it will heat the thermostats so they can open. This is also so there are no dry air pockets in the motor to let the metal develop hot spots. The pisser is on the discharge side of the thermostat an usually there is enough bypass to still see a discharge before the stats open. The reason you get a delay from the time you start the motor until you see water is, it takes time for the block to fill with water and get enough flow through the bypass. Most two stroke motors start to open the thermostat at approx. 110 - 120 degrees and are usually fully open by the time they reach 135 or so. The reason you run a pressurized cooling system and pay close attention to you water pressure on outboards, is because hot spots can develop, turning the water to steam and the steam will push all the water out, which causes melt down. Now, with all that said, do I know what's wrong with your motor and can tell you how to fix it. NO!!. My first question would have to be, has the motor every been run is salt water? If so, my first suspect would be the water passages are corroded to the point. The ones for the pisser are a lot smaller than the mains. The only cure for that problem is to pull the power head off and the heads off the power head and spend the need day of two trying to clean them out, since you can't soak the block and a solution to remove it. My next question would have to be, have you ever heard of dirt dabber's. The ones in may part of the world prefer a ready made hole any day of the week over one they have make. Don't think just the water pressure is going to flush them out either. They make that mud like concrete and manually removing it is the only way to open the hole up. Oh, and they can go very deep into a motor to build them.

First, you have to remember, Mercury usually only rebrands someone else's motor in their small engine line and sometimes they are not that great at picking the best company to put their name on. That one is probably a Tohatsu so compare the two motors and see it they look the same, then read the reviews on the 2.5 Tohastu.

Battery Minder and Battery Tender are to quality examples of battery maintainers. There are numbers small 2, 3, and 4 amp chargers that used as trickle chargers. Most maintainers, maintain a constant voltage of 13.1 to 13.4VDC. 13.17VDC is the ideal maintenance voltage for most flooded cell, deep cycle batteries. Just a couple of tenths more than that are you will start damaging your battery. Even the smallest chargers are going to be putting out close to, if not more than 14 volts. There are some maintainers that cycle on and off. When the battery reaches full charge, they stop charging until the battery drops to a set voltage level and then they turn back on, Dual Pro chargers used to work this way, not sure about now, since I've retired several years ago and don't have a whole lot to do with that stuff anymore. However it all boils down to the fact it's your batteries and you can charge or not charge them any way you see fit. I know ain't know body gonna tell me how I should be taking care of my stuff.

As others have mentioned, there is no such thing as a safe boat. All boats are only as safe as the operator. It all boils down to knowing your capabilities and limitations as much as it is the boats. If eithers are exceeded, it usually makes for a bad day on the water, and this all comes with experience. There will always be times when you get caught in a bad situation and usually you have that gut feeling it might be a bad idea before you do it, but you convince yourself to try it any way. Usually it's when you know it's time to hang it up and not go, or wanting to try that one last spot and go for it. Those are the situations, that providing you live to tell about it, are the ones that provide that very valuable experience. After 55 years of being on the water and being one of those types that pushed everything to the limit, I've managed to build an encyclopedia full of "dumbs**t" ideas but each one gave me valuable insight on where the limits were at, mine and the various boats. It's just too bad our brains are not like computers that you can download all that knowledge life has provided and pass it on.

Not a trickle charger, use a battery maintainer. There is a huge difference and a trickle charger will burn a battery up if left on for long periods. A battery that sits for months must be charged at least every 6 to 8 weeks if not on a maintainer. A battery self discharges while sitting, some rather quickly. Once they get below approx. 80% charge, they start to sulfate. A sulfated cell can not transfer electrons so that part of the cell is useless. After a few months they can become so sulfated the battery is total junk.

All lower units can lock up the motor, depending on where they lock up at. Best thing to do is just drop the lower unit and see if that frees the motor, and keep you fingers crossed when you check.

That's an old trick that has been around for years. During WWII, they had water injection in piston airplane engines they could use for an instant burst of power, but the engine was rebuilt after using it. Mechanics have used it on engines just before rebuild teardown to de-carbon them. It does cause a significant compression spikes that can break rings and cause damage parts so it's not something I would recommend doing to a perfectly good engine. If it was a good thing, drag racers would be using it instead of nitrox oxide. As for trouble shooting your problem, first you need to find out if it's fuel or fire. I would start by manually spraying pre-mixed gas in each carb and see if it starts up easily. If it does, that shows it's not getting enough fuel. If it's still hard, it could be getting too much fuel or have a weak spark. A spark checker would be handy now to make sure each cylinder has a strong blue spark. Not know a lot about Mercs. does that motor have a choke or primer system. A choke has butterflies that close off the carb venture. A primer has a solenoid valve that opens and lets fuel go directly into the intake. If it's primer, the solenoid my not be working. Also, make sure when you pump the primer bulb, you pump until it's firm, if it's not getting firm, you need to find and fix that problem. A primer bulb valve, or carb could be leaking by. I just read your last post, if you run a two stroke without a good tight seal on the air silencer, you will get gas inside the cowl. By the nature of the way they work, that have a right smart of blow back that comes out of the carbs when it running, so if it's not confined, it makes a mess. Oh, and that butt connecter being burn, means it is not making a good connection and causing a resistance, that resistance it what's causing the heat that burning the wire/connector

That's kinda right. Actually it damages any lead acid battery to discharge it to less than 25% capacity, even the thick, solid lead plate batteries in industrial electric forklifts that weigh thousands of pounds each. Now what it does affect is the batteries cycle count, the number times a battery can be discharged and recharged. The more a battery is discharged the fewer times it can be recharged. For instance, if you discharged it until the TM was turning very slow, say to 25% every time you used it, it may recharge 150 time. If you only discharge it to 50%, it may recharge 250 times. If you only discharge it to 75% it may recharge 400 times. Please note, these numbers are just used to show an example, by no means take them as being fact. There are a number of things that determine and affect the cycle count of batteries, Flooded cell vs AGM, the type construction, spiral or stacked cells, the type alloy the plates are made of, how close the plates are stacked together, the design of the plates and the list goes on.

Glad to see Rodfather did his homework. You never want to use a deep cycle battery as a cranking battery on the larger outboard motors. They are ok on smaller motors that don't need a lot of cranking amps but you can actually having starting problems on the big motors if running deep cycles. As mentioned, automobile battery/cranking batteries are designed to give a large burst of current in a short time but not to be discharged very many times. Deep cycle batteries are designed to be discharged many times but not to give large burst of current for a short time. Running them as cranking batteries on large motors that need that high current to crank can cause the batteries voltage to drop too low to turn on the engines electronics, just like trying to crank one with a weak/bad cranking battery. Ever have your fish finder turn off when you try cranking the motor, or on cold mornings the motor is cranking over but extremely hard to get if fired up, that could be why. Now for runabouts and family fun boats that are not running all the electronics we run in bass boats, automotive batteries are fine. However, if you are running a high powered stereo that's p***ing me off next to where I'm fishing you still want to avoid automotive batteries. For those situations is why they make dual purpose batteries. They can give that short burst of high current to crank the motor {just not for a long duration like a cranking battery} and still be discharge without harming the battery. I run at a minimum, the highest powered group 27 dual purpose as a cranking battery in every boat I own. a true deep cycles for TM batteries. A little note, it takes a given amount of energy to crank a motor, that energy is a combination of Volts and Amps. Higher voltage needs less amperage, lower voltage needs great amperage. As a battery has to produce more amperage, the voltage is dropping. A good properly sized cranking battery may drop to 10.5 or 11 volts while cranking a larger motor. A weak or wrong size battery can drop well below 10 volts even to 7 or 8 and still make the starter turn, but that voltage is too low for the ignition system and other components to work.

If you don't have the Evinrude lube in it, hope it don't fail while the warranty is still good. You might end up eating the repair bill. Each manufacture has specific additives they want to be run in their gear cases.

You didn't hurt it. About the only thing you could possibly do is bend the skeg and that didn't happen so no harm done. A lot of times when changing steering cables and needing to disconnect the motor to get them out/in, unbolt the motor, crank the tongue jack up until holding it balanced on the skeg so i can move it around to get the cable out. This is with two people, my arms are not long enough to reach the tongue jack and hold the motor at the same time.

Like I said, it's based on your demands. Check Hobby King and places like that in China and you can find 6S 45C batteries for $50 or less on sale. 10 of those in parallel would give you approximately 24 volts and a 50Ah battery for $500 That's about all 2 group 24 will give in series when it comes right down to it. Naturally, you are going to have a few dollars spent on getting them tied together. Then you have the expense of getting enough charger designed for lithiums. Getting everything needed would no be cheap because nothing but lithium based chargers will work. Also be aware, there have been numbers of houses burned down from lithium batteries.

It's way more important they be within 5% of each other, and that on a warmed engine. Different gauges can give different numbers, unless you do a leakdown test. That's the more accurate test. Leakdown measures the amount of air escaping from the combustion chamber and is a percentage, so the is very little room for error. It uses two matched gauges on a manifold. 100 psi is set as the input, it passes through a .040" orifice into the cylinder with piston at TDC. Any leakage by the rings etc. is going to cause a drop in the pressure on the second gauge that's on the cylinder side of the manifold. Again, that magic number should be no more that 5% on a warm engine. On the newer motors, the ECM usually tracks the hours and the dealers diagnostic software should give you that. If a cylinder is low,yow can squirt some oil in it to see if it's the rings or head. If its the rings, the oil helps seal them and the numbers go up. If they remain low, there's a probably a problem on top, head gasket, valves if four stroke etc, For what it cost to run one now, unless they are doing a lot of tournament fishing, I don't think many are doing all that running they used to.

AGM's are about the only affordable battery and it's not that much lighter. The biggest question is how log and at what power level you plan on using then. You van actually put an amp meter in line with your TM and make a log of how many amps, and for how long you use. When you have what you feel is a fairly good representation of you usage you can get batteries that provide 25% more tha the amount you used. You want that extra 25% because it damages a battery to discharge it any lower, plus you would be moving very slow by then. You can actually build you a lithium power pack a lot cheaper than you can buy one.