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As KeyPine stated, it is fine to have the upper bolt holes exposed. Our twins came from Contender mounted half way up, with the top two holes exposed. Hopefully the extra couple of inches you may be able to achieve by raising your engine will prevent the engine from getting dunked during your hole shot. As a bonus, you should also see an improvement in performance. I'm suprised they mounted it so low when they repowered. Keep us updated....
Run that bitch and dont forget the ring Free
you re traced your steps and Bingo
you dont run out of fuel
and break somthing
but know you about this fuc of a motor
Ive been threw the same cluster
get back and fish
I have yet to see you post a kill & grill
go get em Gringo
Ha, that's Just cause the fishing's been lousy the past couple months. And before that I didn't post on THT for over a year. If you had followed the old TCI photo thread I used to have going on here two years ago, you would have seen some of the dolphin, wahoo, yellowfin, mutton snapper, cerro mackeral and groupers we've caught here. And conch. lots and lots of those wild, fighting, exciting conch!
I do use Ring Free. I am about to run out, though. What's another alternative that the local evinrude/merc dealer would carry?
Reminds me of a time I had to take everything apart and found out a wire was loose. frustrating that I didn't check it first, glad that's all it was......
"WELCOME TO GRINGO'S YAMAHA OUTBOARD REPAIR SHOP"
THE ONLY GOOD ONE IN THE COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!
Man that's just great...good logical problem solving....after looking at what they stuffed in there...I'd never complain about my Chevy/OMC Cobra IO again...
__________________
1988 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra
1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee
4.0/NV 242 Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited
5.7 HEMI/Quadradrive II
Well, I thought of just saying 'found a loose connector' and leaving it at that. But then I thought, well, maybe someone out there might see this and realize that there are a lot of troubleshooting things you can do yourself, and you might find a huge problem, or you might just find you can fix a whole lot more than you thought you could by thinking it through.
This motor was pretty intimidating to me when I started, when I realized how much of this stuff I was going to have to remove to replace that exhaust cover and pressure valve. Living where I do, sometimes I just have to grab a wrench and get started. I have been doing all of our vehicle maintenance down here for four years now. Starting with all the steel brake lines on a Ford Expedition, then laying in the dirt on the side of a road replacing a starter, and on to replacing hydraulic master cylinders, u-joints, and other stuff on Land rovers, fixing the transfer case shifter on a Suzuki, and replacing oil/fuel pump on an Evinrude 70. I have been replacing parts inside our refrigerator, the dishwasher, installing a whole house water filtering system, an irrigation pump, a gray water submersible pump and pressure switch, a solar water heater, it just keeps going on and on. And getting easier. I've had to do all the maintenance on an earlier Whaler with the Evinrude, a newer Whaler with a Merc ( no engine probs there yet) our Andros with the 150 Yammie, and now this Contender. I've troubleshot and fixed bilge pumps, switches, tabs, a jackplate, lights, fuel systems, done radio and GPS installations, it just keeps going.
Now, this Yammi is by far the most complicated and alien thing I have worked on yet, but I am not so intimidated any more and am willing to take on a bit more of the maintenance with the online help I have received from you guys ( especially Andy of SIM) and some documentation. And I learn as I go. I learned a lot this week.
Someone once said that the difference between an ordeal and an adventure is in your attitude about the experience. Man, living in a place like this is an adventure.
Ha, that's Just cause the fishing's been lousy the past couple months. And before that I didn't post on THT for over a year. If you had followed the old TCI photo thread I used to have going on here two years ago, you would have seen some of the dolphin, wahoo, yellowfin, mutton snapper, cerro mackeral and groupers we've caught here. And conch. lots and lots of those wild, fighting, exciting conch!
I do use Ring Free. I am about to run out, though. What's another alternative that the local evinrude/merc dealer would carry?
carbon gaurd e rude quickkleen merc sea foam & valtec????
Well, I just grabbed a faceplate and snorkel and went over and got it. It actually felt good to get in the water.
I can't wait to get out and try the boat now. I will get some photos, or a video, of it while we come up on plane and maybe some of the experts here can tell me for sure if the motor is too low. I just put a different prop on it, too. Might get it on plane a little quicker, at the cost of some top end. But we NEVER run WOT anyhow. So top end is not a huge deal to us, plus/minus a mile or two per hour.
On the bolt holes, it does not matter that any of the holes are exposed. What matters is that you have two bolts in one of the sets of holes on the top half of bracket, and two on the slots that are on the bottom half. I for instance have my F225 Yamaha slid all the way up with no issues - ie I have my upper two bolts slid into the two lowest holes of those four regular round holes in upper half of bracket, and the two lower bolts are bottomed out against the bottom of the long slots in bottom half of bracket.
Does that make sense? You want to look at your cavitaion plate when your boat is on plane at normal to fast cruise with normal trim and try to get it set up so the plate is skimming top of water flow.
Gringo, you must have missed my question earlier, do you have a water pressure guage?
Nope. I been thinking of adding one. Any useful engine guages are good to have. I had a fuel flow system on the Andros, interfaced to the GPS so I got real time MPG, etc. and I miss having that, too.
Well, with the winds howling all week and me working on the Yamaha and other DIY stuff around the house, I don't have any new boating trips this week to post about.
Could put together a post on miscellaneous stuff, I guess. Took a bunch of photos of Bottle Creek Lodge a few weeks back, over on North Caicos. Jay and Sandy are putting it up for sale.
Anyone interested in buying a functional bonefish lodge on North Caicos, including a 30 ft. Grady and an Andros panga? Oh, wait, I might buy the panga....
I couldn't stand it any more. The wind is still blowing 20 kts. out of the east right now, and it's choppy, but I been thinking about this motor for two days and needed to get out and see how it runs.
And it doesn't run good. It starts easy, and idles okay. We have an inland kind of marina, and go out through a totally protected channel. La Gringa was watching the outboard as I motored on out, and she said that with any bow lift at all the seam where the fiberglass cowling meets the lower cowling was under two inches of water right at the very back.
Getting out of the protected channel and into about a two foot chop in our face I put the motor tilt all the way down ( prop forward, thrust max down, bow down, however you want to describe it.) and goosed it. The four bladed prop got it up on plane a whole lot quicker, like instantly. And away we went, merrily hopping across the tops of the waves. I kept her bow pointed directly into the wind, figuring if the motor quit on me it would blow me right back the way I wanted to drift. The most I saw out of it was 3900 RPM. And that lasted about five minutes. When the RPM dropped down to around 3200-3300, I turned it around and we limped back to the marina. I did manage to get a short video of the motor with us on plane. Took some stills, too. They are like this:
Thats with the boat on plane at about 3900 RPM. I didn't tilt it bow up, cause that put the motor deeper.
Then it started losing RPM, down to about 3200. So I turned around and we went downwind back to the marina. It didn't lose any more rpm, stayed at about 3200 with the throttle at full. Here's that sad tale:
Throttle to the wall, three bars up on the trim, 3200 RPM and the speed says 16-17 mph but that speed is from the pitot tube, I think it was probably a little faster than that. Didn't bother checking GPS. Doesn't matter, it's running like crap.
And of course it doesn't pay to get too distracted looking at the gauges boating around here. If you look off the port bow you can see what I mean, a coral head under stirred up water. There are more to Stbd. And I guess i sorta got a couple miles out...but it was running, just not running well.
Running over one of those can reset all your priorities in a hurry. And they are everywhere around here. Water depth goes from 9 feet to three feet, real real quick.
Coming back into the marina, in calm water at a fast idle to maintain control in this wind, I asked La Gringa to snap a photo of the HPDI off plane. It's not under water at this point, but it's close.
So, I have already emailed the yard manager at the boatyard, and asked him about hauling the boat, pressure washing the hull and raising the motor two holes.
Me, I am thinking that I now need to comb the island for a compression guage, and check the cylinders. What my gut tells me is that I have some corrosion on some reed valves. At least, I think I hope that's what I need to check next. I think that if I had a piston problem that it would have shown itself at 3900 RPM.
I have no clue, yet, what's involved in getting to the reed valves. I bet it just involves a whole lot of linkage and intake manifold bolts, huh? I guess I am going to find out unless someone else has another idea.
Hey, the good news is that it runs. And the way going forward is to find and remedy the damage caused by the water getting in, and to also take the steps to stop the water from getting in after it's fixed. Is it possible that this motor is just too short for this boat?
Well, being an optimist, i am hoping that I can fix whatever happened and get it going again.
Yam did have a recall on the cowling gasket but that was way before your model year. What rpm's were you getting before? Rev limiter kicks in a 6250, I get 59-6k but with a 3 blade 21p and a whole lot less weight. I get 5800 with a full load so i would think with your boat and the motor mounted properly anything over 5k would be decent.
My Yam speedo is dead nuts on compared to my GPS so if the tube has no abstructions there is a good chance that it is acurate.
By the way awesome thread!!
__________________
2006 Skeeter ZX24 Bay
2006 Yamaha 300 HPDI
2008 Ford F-150 FX4 5.4
Team: FINE DINING --~ <)))))<
I never saw anything more than about 5100 RPM with this, even when we first launched it in November. But something around 5,000 RPM with the three blade 19p. This four blade is also 19 pitch, and about 5/8 of an inch less diameter. I was expecting to get a few more RPM out of it, but obviously it's gotta get fixed before that is going to happen.
