Mercury Engine Stalling

"Last Saturday I was out on my

"Last Saturday I was out on my 2001 Stingray with a 185HP V6 engine. We had a full load of people, and we were going about 25 MPH. The engine simply died. So I pretended that I turned it off, and had everyone go for a swim. About an hour later, I started it up, and headed back to the dock. I assume it was a one time problem, so I started to ski a few people. On the second person the boat began to stall every time I accelerated. I went back to the dock, and began to check it out. The distributor cap was clean, the carburetor (rebuilt last year) was clean, and the fuel filter was a little dirty, but not bad. I re-cleaned everything, and then tried to start. It runs for 30 seconds to a minute and then stops, as though I turned it off. I did a few more diagnostics and then tried again. No luck. It just kept dieing every 30 seconds to a minute.

When the boat is running it sounds just like normal, but it stalls everytime. Also, usually I can start the boat (when it is warmed up) by just turning the key. Now I need to give it a little throttle.

Does anyone have any suggestions?"

"Is that the first tank of gas

"Is that the first tank of gas you have run through it this year?

I am having somewhat similar problems, though only during corners. I am considering going to the lake tomorrow and just trying to run as much fuel through as I can and get some fresh gas in it.

I topped it off last year before storage and then added a ton of fuel stabilizer, and it was stored in a barn. I've stored it like that for years without problems.

Sounds like you are starving for fuel in some manner. You are in fuel injected though I am sure with a 2001. Good luck."

"Actually it is caborated stil

"Actually it is caborated still. This is likely the 4th fill up for me, however it did occur about 30 minutes after the I filled up on the lake. Do you think that it could just be water in the gas or something?"

"If you have a water separatin

"If you have a water separating filter I would change it and empty the old one carefully into a large cotainer. This will certainly show you if you got any water in your last tank.
Are you using E10 gas? I hear that causes troubles, although we don't have that here.
If the filter checks out, it sounds like your elec fuel pump may be iffy.
Rod"

Would the electric fuel pump t

Would the electric fuel pump turn on and off like that? And is there a way to electronically test that?

"You can T a pressure gauge in

"You can T a pressure gauge in at the inlet to your carb.
You should have 4-5 psig pressure at all times. If not, the pump is your problem.
Rod"

"Would it back fire, if it was

"Would it back fire, if it was there was water in the gas?"

"No it would not likely backfi

"No it would not likely backfire, at least mine did not and I had TONS of water in my fuel. Didn't know condensation on a full tank over winter could get that much water in the tank, but I tell you when I pulled the filter off the fuel pump housing for the fourth time I could see plain ole water, about a teaspoon, sitting on top of the pump gasket.

Seafoam. Like $9 a bottle, and the Marina mechanic at Bald Eagle State Park, and his son swore by it. I was majorly skeptic, thinking, it's just a super expensive bottle of dry gas.

I finally decided $18 was the easiest/cheapest thing I could do next, and it worked like a charm. I put two bottles in. 1.5 in the fuel tank, and 1/2 in the crankase (it takes moisture out of oil too.).

The first corner I took hard, it almost stalled out on me. The second corner, the RPM dropped about 1500, (this was after I took it up and down the lake 2x, hitting lots of waves and wakes to shake things in the tank up a bit). The next hard corner I took the RPM dropped a couple hundred, then I started doing serpantine turns to really get the fuel sloshing around in the tanks. After that it would do anything I wanted it to.

I am now on the market for an inline fuel water seperator with a visible fuel/water bowl and an openable petcock to drain off any visible water/sediment w/o having to take off the filter.

(Um actually the water in the fuel probably came from the fact I had my battery disconnected while on the lake side slip during a nasty rainstorm, so no bilge pump....by the time I got there the water was well above the top of the fuel tank, and I have since noticed that I need to replace some fuel filler and vent lines that don't look exactly water tight...)

Now I've got an automatic bilge pump wire straight to the battery. Was considering a solar panel to make up for stray voltage loss, and they few thousand milli-amp hours I expect to lose from the battery from periodic storms and such.

Sooner or later I am going to have experience the majority of what can go wrong with a boat, and then maybe I can avoid them!

It is possible you got some bad gas.

Would check the filter.

I could actually see water vapor condensing on my throttle plates and throttle body too.

Good luck."