purchased a used boat with a kicker, and you have to manually switch a valve to change the gas running from big motor to kicker…Is there a better way..you cant run them both at the same time..and its just a little bit of a pain…How is it done on other rigs??
Mine is just teed off. There is no valve and the fuel runs to both at the same time. I don’t know why you would have a need for the valve. Every boat I’ve seen it is just a tee.
We have this same setup with the manual switch. From what I’ve heard they make a special valve that only lets the gas run one way. Otherwise when you run one and not the other the line that is not running will allow air into the gasline and cause problems. After you get used to having the switch it’s not that bad. I can start our main motor(90hp Merc) while running the kicker and it will run for about 5 minutes at idle speed, then I just step back and shut off the kicker and switch the line over to the main motor and go.
I have a bulb on both the fuel line to the main motor and the one to the kicker. The pumper bulb has a check valve in it so the fuel shouldn’t be able to flow back into the other line even without the valve. It doesn’t make sense to me.
THe reason they put the valve in is that you cant trust the check valve on a $5 inline primer bulb. IF it failed and it sucked the line to your kicker dry it will suck air from the kicker’s carb and you just blew your main motor up!!!!! The only solutions are check to see if your fuel tank has 2 fuel pickups, use a manual valve or use a water filter/seperator that has 2 outputs. The primer bulb may work but it can fail unless you change out bulbs every year or 2.
MWal
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