b84 johnson 60hp motor issue running bad only sometimes

"Buddy and I went out fishing

"Buddy and I went out fishing in my boat for the first time this year today. When I started the motor it ran very badly (had the motor running last weekend and started up and ran great, responsive etc). It would hardly idle, had to raise the idle way up, it ran rough and when you did rev it up it was very unresponsive and sometimes stall, if you put it in gear it had very little power.

After checking to make sure everything was plugged in, and restarting it a few times it would fire up and run like a top, powerful.. idle great, troll with it etc.. get to a spot. shut it off, fish a bit, start it to go to another location would be fine again, decide to move to another spot a bit later.. start it up.. and run bad again, barely idleing.. no power etc.. most of the time it ran fine.. but sometimes it ran horrible.. any ideas what might be wrong?"

"Thats an odd one. Hard to dia

"Thats an odd one. Hard to diagnose over a computer without hearing it run. running horribly could mean alot of different things, like your primer bulb is not staying hard and losing fuel back to the tank. Or a contaminated carburetor that sometimes runs ok then plugs up with junk from the bowl and acts stupid. possible intermittent spark for many reasons. Simplest first. make sure your pushing clean fuel, and that the carbs are totally clean."

"I would not be surprised if Y

"I would not be surprised if You ind the problem in a faulty/misfunctioning ignition switch or safety switch. There is either some bad connector in the ignition sysem or one of above mentioned partly activating/grounding the stop circuit. If it happends again try to pull the black/yellow wire out of the power pack connector to eliminate the stop circuit. To stop the engine afterwords, just choke it."

"well was just out looking at

"well was just out looking at the motor (just purchased the motor a month or so ago btw) and there is a red lever on the sdie, it was in the middle, I just started it up and moved it all the way to guess on position and it seems to be running ok, when I moved it to the other side it started to run badly."

"Morts idea is better for 1st

"Morts idea is better for 1st things 1st. Thats even easier than carb cleaning! do that first! "