Mercury XR4 150

[timw8954]

I bought a 91 ranger..with only 96 hours and its real..original owner blah blah..Ran great, ran a tank down to 1/8 or so now hasn't run right since..all the fuel lines were bad. changed all of them..added fuel filter separator..rebuilt carbs..and fuel pump/diaphragm...still no power to take off out of the hole..bogs down..could it be spark? coils? at my wits end..any help??

 

[galamb]

Lesson here - low hours on an old outboard is not a good thing. Outboard is 22 years old. 96 hours means less than 5 hours run time a year/average.

How much money do you think the "original owner" spent on annual/routine maintenance on a motor that got used, on average, one weekend a year (and more than likely the majority of that 96 hours was in the first couple of years and then went numerous years without even being fired up).

If I personally came across a motor such as this I would "assume" that I would have to drop significant bucks/time into it to get it into running condition.

I would assume -

The carbs are gummed up (ok you rebuilt them)

Ditto the fuel pump, water pump (you mentioned the fuel pump, assume you did at least the impeller, but that wouldn't be your issue here).

Your main crank seals could be toast - rubber sitting for 20 years rots or at the very least gets used to how it's sitting - all of a sudden you fire it up and start using it "normally" and all those seals "go".

Personally, I would change any seals/gaskets that are in "easy reach" - you just don't know what has "died due to lack of use".

One of the gaskets I would change would be the powerhead base gasket which means pulling the (complete) powerhead. That gives you the opportunity to get a look at the exhaust tube/housing. There could be wasps nests, bees nests, rats/mouse nests in there in that nice hidden/weather protected area of the motor.

Once everything was back together I would run a pretty rich mixture of gas/Seafoam (or the like) even after going through a can of Merc's "Powertune".

If the gas you ran contained ethanol it probably washed every bit of varnish and other crud that was in the fuel system away which could be "re-clogging" your rebuilt carbs.

Ethanol keeps your fuel system "clean" if you run it all the time. It is a nightmare the first time you use it (on an old motor) or a motor that has sat for a couple of seasons.

If this is sounding like it could be a pile of work, it certainly could be. A motor with 960 hours would have given you far less trouble.

Any motor that gets used less than 50 hours a year (and 100 hours is better) is one better avoided unless your plan is to drop many buck and many hours "restoring it"....

PS - get a Seloc's manual - you are probably going to need it before you are done....