2 stroke burning to much oil

Up north running my dad’s pontoon all week and noticed not only heavy smoke at start up and idle but burning about 1 gallon of two stroke oil per 12-15 gallons. Can you say rich. While I know the easy solution is to disconnect the VRO “oil injection” and manually mix or replace pump. The motor is 1988 40 HP Evinrude with a seperate tank for the oil. As a side note, someone mentioned a broken cable that allows the oil to go on the maximum setting for engine safty . While I love my father he is very anal and thinks it works fine and we should leave it alone. Ideas welcomed.

not sure on that motor but mercs have a couple lines on a tab that you can use to see where the oil injection is set. The repair manual also has the correct settings in it. In your situation I would just check to see that everything is hooked up and moving as it should be with the throttle linkage.

If alittle is good more should be better JK actually some truth to that though because although to much oil will not blow your engine,but over a longterm if you continue to run it too rich you will have problems. The first will be fouling plugs which will lead to hard starting and overall poor engine performance. Also over time you will build up excessive carbon on the piston tops and cylinder heads. IMO get it fixed.

I want to say they fail rich (oil pump), but don’t hold me to that…

Meanwhile I’d make sure and run seafoam or ringfree to help deal with any extra carbon.

I was told that when a VRO pump goes bad they run rich at idle, but too lean at speed slowly taking the motor out. People will argue that the VRO pumps are fine, but my brother in-laws 90HP grenaded on him. It got louder and louder over a couple of years. Rattling more and more. He did change the pump, but the damage was already done, and it went the next spring. He put a used powerhead from an 88HP motor that was a oil mix motor, and that has been flawless for him for a few years now. His still has the VRO pump, but he has cut the oil lines and mixes the gas now just to be safe. I don’t care how many people say the VRO is a good system, I would never trust one.

My 50hp evi had a bad VRO from the factory–replaced it, that pump was bad as well. Called evinrude and asked them if it would void my warranty if I went gas-oil mix and disconnected the VRO–which they said fine to and actually recommended doing for saltwater applications!
Motor ran like a top and never missed a beat-thing will probably run forever.
Our local mechanic makes a TON of money buying blown VRO motors and rebuilding them, selling them as gas-oil mix motors.
Think that pretty much speaks for itself there.