A New Carburetor

August 19th and 20th (Wednesday and Thursday)

Ah, it was lovely to sleep in and rest.  After another 15 days of working it sure was nice to have some time off.  It was mail day on Wednesday, and since we were expecting some items, we walked over and visited with Tiger and Dorothy in the afternoon.  We received the items that we were hoping for, one of which was our new carburetor and prime start assembly for our outboard.  Ever since we had started to troubleshoot our outboard’s running problems, we troubleshooted our way through the service manual and the majority of the symptoms pointed to a problem with either the carburetor or the prime start, which is essentially Yamaha’s version of an automatic choke.  

As I believe I had mentioned in the past, we had ordered a small ultrasonic cleaner, since that was what we had heard was the most effective way to thoroughly clean a carburetor.  After receiving the ultrasonic cleaner we attempted several times to clean the carb, we tried different cleaning solutions, used brake clean afterwards, and blew it out with compressed air, but instead of getting better, if anything, our running issues got worse.  How they could get worse from what we did we do not know, but the fact that they did led us to think even more so that the problem lay with the carb or the prime start.  

I got a quote from a Yamaha parts and service centre for a new carburetor and prime start, and not only was the carburetor back ordered and we would probably wait several months to receive it, but it would also cost us around $700.  Since we were not certain that this would resolve our issue, we were very hesitant to spend that much money.  Instead, we ended up finding an after-market carburetor and prime start assembly on e-bay for around $200 including expedited shipping.  We received it two weeks later, and in perfect time for our time off.  

On Thursday morning the rain actually stopped for a few hours, and that was plenty of time to pull off our old carb and put on our new one.  We started up our engine, and after making a fine-tune adjustment to the low idle screw we took Kiki out for a spin.  All of our running problems were gone.  The cough at a certain mid rpm on acceleration was gone, the cough in the same rpm range on deceleration was gone, and we were able to run at full throttle without any issues.  Now, several days later, we have started the outboard several times, and our starting issue seems to be gone as well.  Yay!!!!

Although we had planned to stay home on Thursday to rest and clean, we headed out fishing instead.  We were excited to use Kiki again, and it was a calm day.  While out fishing we had many rain showers, but it remained almost glassy calm.  Some of the rain showers were incredibly hard and the water droplets were massive, but since none of the showers were too long lasting it was almost novel sitting out in Kiki trolling along the shoreline and watching the water droplets’ impact on the ocean’s surface.  

In between the rain showers we got to see lots of wildlife.  We saw two orca whales; we actually saw them twice.  The first time was when we had just started trolling and we saw them up ahead.  They appeared to be coming our way, but after they had surfaced several times they suddenly dove and disappeared.  The second time was at the entrance to Cousins Inlet on our way back home.  Once again we saw them surface several times, and then they dove and disappeared.  I usually expect humpback whales to dive and disappear; orca whales seem to more often travel along the surface, and it was the first time that we had seen them dive and simply disappear.  We also saw several humpback whales.  Two seemed to be traveling together, and we saw one of them breach.  Another one seemed to be by itself and it came in along the shoreline about 300 feet ahead of us and was feeding almost right up against the rock wall.  It was quite neat to see.  We also saw several Common Loons and two Red Throated Loons.  

We stayed out and fished for several hours, but unfortunately we did not catch any salmon.

 

 

 

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