2001 50 hp Honda 4 stroke runs rough onoff

"Hi I'm a newbie to this f

"Hi I'm a newbie to this forum and just purchased my first new boat. I bought it because it had a honda motor and I trust the reliability of Honda. The problem I am having is that it runs rough under load and won't plane sometimes. It won't idle at all, just shuts off. It did idle ok in my driveway but that doesn't help me. It won't idle any more in my driveway after today.I thoght maybe it just had to be run and then everything would be ok. I ran premium fuel figuring it would help clean out any gunk that might had clogged any jets. No luck. It'll run rough and not plane then it'll suddenly get up and go, then die again on and off. I took it out for the first time today and had fun with it when it ran but then it was back to on and off it felt like it was only running on 2 cylds when it ran bad. It may be my imagination but it seemed to pick up when I pumped the fuel bulb. It never went totally flat but I could give it a few good pumps with pressure and it ran for a few secs good. Then sometimes it ran fine with no sputtering for a few miles. I tried bypassing the fuel/water filter just in case the filter was clogged. I thought it worked but it was back to the on/off sputter in no time. The tach is also not working just in case this indicates any issues. this is a remote engine with electric start. It had been sitting for a while from whomever I purchased it but they said they had the carbs rebuilt and the engine had a clean bill of health, likely story. Any help would be greatly apprciated. I ordered a SELOC manual to help but experience always outweighs any manual."

It does sound like a fuel issu

It does sound like a fuel issue. I would go thru it head to toe and make sure everything is clean then just for good measure i would do the carbs yourself after you get a manual. You never know the last guy may have just sprayed carb cleaner thru them. After that if you still have issues then its back to basics compression/spark tests.

I decided to have a profession

I decided to have a professional mobile mechanic come by and check it out before I started guessing. Turned out the carbs were not in sync by any means. One was at 4 the other at 10 and the last at 20 psi. Nowhere near where they were supposed to be. We still could not get a smooth idle even though they were all in sync at 5 psi each. We decided to go with a rebuild since the top carb idle jet seemed to be clogged. It would rev instead of bog down when you covered it up. Hopefully we'll have it back together before this labor day weekend and I'll post how it works. Any other input would be helpful though. I am still going to change the water pump impeller and thermostat for preventative maintenance and the fact the engine sat for a few years without running. I still need to get the tach working and the trim guage working. I guess I'll start a new post if I have any problems with that.
Thanks again.

"Brand new Honda 50 hard to cr

"Brand new Honda 50 hard to crank.....
I figured that there was some magic setting of the starting throttle that would word, but after 2 years of trying "everything" - no luck. The dealer I bought it from was out of business, and other local dealers didn't want to work on it. I suppose they can't make much money on warranty work. So I got a lot of runaround. One of the dealers actually told me that "Honda engines were just hard to crank" (I'm tempted to send that comment to North American Honda). Anyway,the service people I talked to were convinced that the carbs were clogged....maybe so, but it has been like this since it was brand new.(?) It runs great after it cranks. I suspect that the fuel/air ratio is not correct when it is cold. Any other folks experienced this problem, and if so, what was "the fix"?"