dwhildreth
New member
2007 Mercruiser 4.3 Turn-Key Start, 2 barrel carb with Alpha II drive.
The boat has around 300 hours and has been very well maintained, never had any problems until this year.
It has left us stranded 3 times now being towed in each time, here are the symptoms.
The boat will run great for about 45 minutes, then dies. Oil pressure and Engine Temp all good. We checked the carb and it's still getting gas, it still cranks over normally, just not firing or even backfiring.
This seems to be an electrical problem to me.
**(Two seasons ago, we did a complete tune-up with the following parts: Plugs, Cap, Rotor, Plug Wires, new ignition module inside the distributor, Water separator/gas filter.)
After our second time out and it dying, we changed out the Ignition Coil since the ignition module was changed out two seasons ago, but would be suspect to me first off, figured the coil is 14 years old, might as well try that since they can heat up and open up and are a cheap fix. Wasn't that, left us stranded the third time.
Another thing that might or might not be associated with this problem, but seems it could be. I've had to "time" the engine two or three times this season now, timing it with the correct wire grounded out to keep timing at base timing and locking down the distributor after timing @ 10 degrees BTDC. Then rechecking the timing to make sure the distributor didn't move while tightening down, it hadn't moved any of those times.
I'm suspecting the Ignition Control Module is crapping out in the distributor, but not sure if I'm missing something or not.
The boat has around 300 hours and has been very well maintained, never had any problems until this year.
It has left us stranded 3 times now being towed in each time, here are the symptoms.
The boat will run great for about 45 minutes, then dies. Oil pressure and Engine Temp all good. We checked the carb and it's still getting gas, it still cranks over normally, just not firing or even backfiring.
This seems to be an electrical problem to me.
**(Two seasons ago, we did a complete tune-up with the following parts: Plugs, Cap, Rotor, Plug Wires, new ignition module inside the distributor, Water separator/gas filter.)
After our second time out and it dying, we changed out the Ignition Coil since the ignition module was changed out two seasons ago, but would be suspect to me first off, figured the coil is 14 years old, might as well try that since they can heat up and open up and are a cheap fix. Wasn't that, left us stranded the third time.
Another thing that might or might not be associated with this problem, but seems it could be. I've had to "time" the engine two or three times this season now, timing it with the correct wire grounded out to keep timing at base timing and locking down the distributor after timing @ 10 degrees BTDC. Then rechecking the timing to make sure the distributor didn't move while tightening down, it hadn't moved any of those times.
I'm suspecting the Ignition Control Module is crapping out in the distributor, but not sure if I'm missing something or not.
