J70 Bad Primer Bulbs or Bad Gas

Also when i first put it in gear the motor shakes all over the place, it seems like a fuel delivery prob or bad gas.4 primer bulbs in two weeks! There the Attwood brand. My motor is fine from 2500 rpms to wot. It idles fine. Yesterday when i pulled the boat out of the water the exhaust was covered with black soot! My inline glass filter i could see little black specs, along with every 30 sec or so a stream of bubbles as if the gas looks like its at a boil, this with the engine running. I just filled up at this Citgo in a rural area. Usually when i leave my parents house ill bring 2 empty tanks and fill them at a busy WAWA’s here. So before i pull my carbs with only a month rebuild age on them, I figured id run this by the experts. 4 primer bulbs ! At $20 a pop! So is it the gas? Carbs? Bad luck on primer bulbs? Any feedback? Btw the gas lines are new, from tank to motor

The primer bulb is a manual pump to fill the carburetors.----Once that is done it does nothing.------How did you determine that these bulbs were defective.

Simple I disconnected them sometimes air would not flow through the flow side. In all of them it was the side that supposed to block off letting fuel run back into the line,. On 1 it worked sometimes with the arrow pointing up but not when held horizontally. I even had a piece of 3/8ths fuel line and used it with a bottle of water and tried them. These were Attwood make all bought at walmart. The Marine store here is 25 miles away. Btw i should have been clear about this, that they worked out of the package but quit on average 5-7 days. I use my rig everyday,try to anyway.

An old , old saying.-------" the bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten "

Asport-16 said:

In all of them (Fuel Primer Bulbs) it was the side that supposed to block off letting fuel run back into the line. It worked sometimes with the arrow pointing up but not when held horizontally.

Click to expand...

Yeah... Those fuel primer bulb valves, not being spring loaded, it was best to hold the bulb vertically to obtain their proper function.

Racer, excellent quote! Joe, so true, but I have had good performance with the bulb aforementioned. Are you using ethanol, Asport? I have many original primer bulbs from Johnson Evinrude dating back to the 1960's that are still in use on my own personal outboards. They used to be made out of something called "RUBBER".

Yes i know its crazy, to have several go on me. Im new to boating, i herd they go but this is rediculous! Since ive owned the boat ive put in strictly Non Ethanol, that why im suspecting maybe its the gas. I used to only buy the gas at busy stations, were ive seen good traffic. A full tank with my boat lasts for some time. This was the first time i got it there a couple of weeks ago. Any ideas on the big carbon build up on my exhaust? That started about a week ago. Again this is only in low gear. It idles fine. It has bad carb symptoms i just cleaned them out do to some debris in the #1 , i was afraid then my stator was going since then i learned to eliminate the simple things first. Again fuel delivery symptoms also. Is it possible it could be a circuitry issue? It is possible that there was a batch of bad primer bulbs? If it was a fuel pump issue, would it have an even wot issue with no hesitations, like she is running now?

I took the carbs all apart, again. Sprayed them out and she is the same. The procedure to check the circuitry even with the book, and without the proper equipment. When something similar happened like this a couple of weeks ago, i blamed the stator, when there was some junk caught in the #1 carb. I got almost the same symptoms but was just on my second bulb so didnt think anything of that because i herd they do go out occasionally. Looks like a trip to a dealer, may be in order.

Maybe something is getting into the check valve in the primer bulbs and "hanging" them up.....sticking in place. Can you configure a fuel filter between the tank and the primer bulb?

Yes a water fuel seperater came with the boat already installed. Im wondering if there is some kind of vacuum going on having a Negative effect on these bulbs.

I know the replies stopped a few days ago, but maybe someone in the future could learn from it. Timguy i was wrong and you were right about your assumptions if i had been useing methanol gas. I pulled up to my usual gas station and a boat on its trailer was filling up. First time i ever seen one getting gas for their boat besides me. Except he wasn’t filling up his boatt but his vehicle. I asked him if he ever had problems with the gas for his boat here, he said he never gets his gas here because the regular gas and methanol gas is the same pump with one nozzle! Sure enough he was right! I never noticed because his sign for regular non methanol gas is right above the pump, on one hose. So who ever gets gas before myself lets say is going to get that gas before you switch over. The hose and wherever they switch over. Its got to be a couple of quarts i went there 3 times over a couple of weeks, so i know i got a few gallons of that crap in my boat! Hot and a little humid weather with an internal 20 gal gas tank! You may think its not much but how much does it take? What else could be causing those bulbs to quit? Either way if i knew that before i still would not want that gas. I let the owner know about it and im not the only one who has assumed that its all on one pump. He told me he has been waiting on Citgo to put in a specific pump. Ill carry a couple of empties for now on and go somewhere else.

Yup, I think its at least a gallon to pump out all ethanol first to be safe. I put that first gallon in the car or truck. Ethanol should not affect the primer bulbs so quickly, however. I burn ethanol free in my 74 Chev truck too. It runs so much better than on ethanol. I often get comments on how nice that 350 sounds.

We surely can't blame ethanol for all our problems as old Flying Scott used to say, but I avoid it whenever possible in small engines, marine, aircraft (its illegal there), and seasonal equipment, including my vintage and collector cars and trucks.