2004 Yamaha Outboard - Running Irregularly

I have a 2004 Yamaha 150 TXRC outboard motor on my boat. My motor was running irregularly and sputtering while in gear so I decided to flush out my fuel lines and clean out the carbs. I noticed afterwards that the motor started quicker and idled stronger. I decided to take the boat out this morning for a victory ride and the motor not only stalled, but it also would not throttle. While this was happening, I noticed that my gauges (voltage meter, fuel, etc.) would not register. I turned the motor off and waited a minute. Feeling frustrated, I decided to try and restart the motor. The gauges worked fine and the motor ran strong and throttled normally.

Other than contaminated fuel, what would be another reason this is happening?

So this is a 2004 carb'd 2 stroke? Whilst you appear to maybe have an electrical issue to chase down based on what you have said, a common issue on the Yamaha 2 strokes that will give some of your symptoms are bad diaphragms in the fuel pumps. You can check these by unbolting the fuel pump from the side of the engine and then squeezing the fuel primer bulb to see if any fuel leaks out the back of the pump.

Sounds like you've got 2 seperate issues, but not really. If this was related to the fuel system, after you cleaned it and the carbs all would be good, right?

Your gauges went haywire today despite the engine performing better after fuel/carb cleaning, so I'm leaning towards the issue being solely electrical. If this issue you experienced the second time out was fuel related, your gauges would not be affected. But they were. What causes gauges to go haywire....power supply.

And if you're wondering why the engine performed better after cleaning fuel/carbs...A good cleaning of fuel system and carbs will normally result in the manner you described, especially if its been a while since you last cleaned.

As far as troubleshooting, since this deals with the electrical system, unless you're very comfortable with performing the voltage drop tests on multiple harness, wires, etc until the problem is found I would advise leaving it to the pros. If you are comfy with it, good place to start is the power supply and the cdi output.

I think the gauges going haywire points towards this being electrical system related. Sure, the engine idled and ran better after cleaning fuel and carbs, but this naturally would be the result. Being that the engine responded well to the cleaning, yet you're still experiencing the power issue, should eliminate fuel system as the culprit. Start troubleshooting the electrical system, using voltage drop tests. Start with engines power supply and cdi.