Cactus Rat
New member
I am in need of HELP on this one. I have a 1993 Johnson 150hp, TJ150GLETR, V6 2 Stroke Looper mounted on a 1993 18' Nitro bass boat. The motor has run good for the last 23 years with normal maintenance. Due to medical issues I was not able to use it for the last 5 months. I just recently took it to the lake and it seemed to run just fine. I had drained out all of the fuel and filled the tank with fresh fuel on the way to the lake. I ran it off and on to different spots for 5 hours and used 10 gallons of fuel. A week later I take my son with to the lake and we run for a hour to get to our fishing spot. The motor ran fine. We fish for a couple of hours and go to move to another spot and the motor starts missing and sputtering and stops. Crank it and nothing. I pump the in-line fuel bulb and it starts and runs, but sputters and after about 10 minutes stops. Crank it and it won't start. Pump the bulb and it fires up. This happens again. I then have my son sit on the back deck and pump the bulb as we slowly head back to the dock and load the boat on the trailer. So i figure the Fuel Pump has taken a crap. In the yard hooked to the garden hose it will idle for 3 minutes and run out of fuel. So I get a VRO fuel pump rebuild kit and go through the pump. Put the rebuilt pump back on the motor, hook up the garden hose and now the motor will idle for 3 minutes and run out of fuel. So the question is - WHAT PUMPS THE PUMP? What drives the pump? Does it operate off of vacuum and if so where does it draw the vacuum from? How many inches of vacuum does it require? What do I need to replace to resolve this issue.