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BF150 runs out of fuel with 1/2 tank of fuel.

L

lwev1

New member
Hello all, new to the forum, there seems to be a lot of good information here so I ask for some help with a Honda 2008 BF150, we bought it used and the unit had about 186 hours by the boats hour meter, now has about 205 on it. Boat runs great except after running 1/2 to 3/4 throttle for a while 20 to 40 minutes, stop and visit some place for 30 or 40 minutes starts back up fine, run idle speed out of the no wake zone go to throttle up and it acts like it runs out of fuel, surges a few times then dies. try to restart the Motor cranks but does not start, it takes 3 or 4 minutes and it will restart and runs great the rest of the day like nothing happened. Have had this happen twice now 2 different tanks of fuel, 2 different days, tank seems to be venting OK because when taking the cap off you get no sounds. Squeezing the primmer bulb does not seem to help. Fuel tank was 1/2 full or better both times, fuel was from 2 different places. Not sure where to start looking and what to look for.

lwev1
 
lwev1,you ruled out my first hunch - that the tank develops a vacuum because of a venting problem - and the engine then is starved of fuel. You mentioned stopping for a while - and restart ok then dies. It could be a vapor lock developed because the fuel was heated by an engine that had been running hard - then shut down. Heat collects under the hood and in turn the fuel. That's a long shot though.

I will say, I had a Honda Prelude that had a similar issue. Turns out that the ignitor was failing (electronic ignition). When it got hot - it would misbehave. Again, if the area under the hood of your engine gets hot after shutdown (because now it's not circulating cooling water) - it could heat up the ignitor. Like many electronics, when they cool they behave. That's a bit of a long shot as well - and not cheap to "try" - unless you have a friend with a BF150 that would let you borrow their ignitor.

Ideally, when this happens you have access to a timing light - to see if the plugs are seeing appropriate voltage. I'm guessing you have a fuel issue - but verifying spark during the 'bad time' would quickly/easily determine ignition state.
 
Any alarms going off or lights coming on at the key panel? Does your key panel have 2 lights or 4 lights? I think the 150 has a VST tank - Vapor seperator tank. If so, my first inclination would be to drain it and get any water and junk out that may be in there. The procedure should be covered in your owners manual. If you need an owners manual, you can down load a free one http://marine.honda.com/owners/manuals
 
There are no lights or alarms on when this happens or right before or after, there are 4 lights on the dash right by the key switch. It does have a VST tank and I drained it per the manual and got next to nothing out of it. I did mention in my first post that the primer bulb didn't help with the issue but it never got hard either, but this weekend I replaced all filters. water separator, high and low fuel filters now when I pump the bulp it gets hard (strange) but I did noticed that it is leaking fuel (very slightly) at both ends of the bulb so may replace it also because not sure when it is hot if it is sucking in air where it is leaking.
 
I know electronics can be frustrating but I hope the new filters and primer bulb I have installed will fix the problem but will keep this in mind if it does it again.
 
Ran the boat all last week and it ran fine, never had issue with it running out fuel, stalling or anything ran like a Champ! Not sure what was the fix was but everything seems fine now.
I had tried to replace the primer bulb before we left but the one I bought and installed would never pump up so I just hosed clamped the old one to stop the fuel leakage and it works fine.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Lwev1.
 
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