meanwhile at Iowaboy1's shop

Eelpoutguy wrote:

Just flew over Grinnel and waved!

I thought I smelled corona but I wont say what state of digestion it was in

Well, here I go again, sheesh!! I am at that point in life where I am the ‘ old guy ‘ now and if there is something that needs fixed no one else has a clue how to it is brought to me.
I enjoy that and its good to be remembered and I get to teach a younger generation that yes, it can be fixed, no need to throw it away, here, let me show ya how!!

Out of the gate I will start with a carburetor, a Carter two barrel off of a Chrysler industrial engine that is in a mid 70’s Lull material handler.
I honestly think this machine is older than that as it has ancient writing on it that suggests it was used to lift blocks on the pyramids.
Take a look at the throttle shaft and its bore, dang near could throw a cat between the two!, this carb hasnt been available for over twenty years now, but wait!! theres more !!
I spent around four hours contacting carb rebuilders that have the capability to weld the bore holes shut and re-bore them, problem is most places are six to eight weeks out before they can assess it and another three weeks on the bench and thats if it can be saved.
I cant have this thing torn down in my little shop tying up a bay for three months and the contractor needs it daily if at all possible.
Sure, he could rent one or replace it but he doesnt want to spend fifty grand replacing a machine when there is a chance an old farm boy can resurrect it!!

One of my contacts, Daytona parts found a new carb on ebay that is reproduced by an overseas country, from previous experience with elcheapo carbs for old farm tractors I detest cheap crap!!, however, this meant getting a year or two more out of a machine that otherwise would of had to be scrapped.
Mind you,I could of adapted several other carbs to this thing but that leaves me wide open if an accident occurs and the lawyers would have a field day roasting me over an open fire with a liability issue as I modified a fuel system, big no no !! aint nuttin sacred no more???
The new carb for all appearances and purposes looks like and performs like the genuine article much to my elation!!, shoot, I didnt even have to set the idle mix screws or the base idle speed!!
Maybe I got one in a hundred?? I dont know but everything works as designed much to my relief.

Whats this?? a baby accordion?? naw, its a power brake booster off of a ’56 dodge lancer D500 with a 315 Hemi.
The dang thing leaks so bad internally that the motor will about shake itself out its mounts when you push the brake, huge vacuum leak due to bad seals causing a very lean condition on four cylinders.
The rebuilders I talked to on this say four months out and around a grand to rebuild it!! WTH???
A huge shout out to Harmon brakes for sending me a complete overhaul kit AND a copy of the factory service manual on how to rebuild it!!
I will be able to rebuild it inhouse for a fraction of the cost and the 82 year old owner will have his car done in time for the car shows next spring!!

Lastly, folks, we are so blessed at our shop, we have a great customer base that is continually growing and we are not afraid nor do we hesitate to pay it forward to those in need.
We have a customer who is very poor and barely able to get by on ssi so we work with him when he has a problem.
Sure, this doesnt make good business sense as a large bill where we have hard money invested in parts takes a while to make up over time, but in my mind, business isnt always about profit, it is about giving your fellow man a hand up, not a hand out.
Unbeknownst to us, this fellow is somewhat of an artist and he most certainly surprised us with his freehand talent!!!!
He made this sign out of old fence board and put it together as you see it, then he painted it completely freehanded !!
Think what you will of it but to me it is priceless !!!

The frog and Heron pic, here ya go UMY, I thank you very much for the many PM’s and your kind words, this pic is representative of our motto when it comes to saving the old stuff.
Happy New Year everyone!!

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Hey bud, take a break, have a couple of whatever you enjoy, enjoy new years eve and day with the misses. Oh and get your shovel ready

Happy new year sir!!

^^ What He Said! ^^

Hey, Hey IowaBoy, looks like the one that was hell bent on grabbing my Choppo this Fall. THe harder I pulled the faster he came after it. After catching the Owl this spring I sure as HELL didn’t want to catch a Heron?!

Here’s a toast to your adventure and your never say die attitude. As we’ve talked earlier: go to the edge of the cliff and jump off, build your wings on the way down. In your case, you’ll IMPROVE upon wings on the way down.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature……life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Helen Keller

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Iowaboy1 wrote:

Daytona parts found a new carb on ebay that is reproduced by an overseas country…The new carb for all appearances and purposes looks like and performs like the genuine article much to my elation!!, shoot, I didnt even have to set the idle mix screws or the base idle speed!!
Maybe I got one in a hundred?? I dont know but everything works as designed much to my relief.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had excellent results with reproduction carbs for Honda, Stihl, Husqvarna, B&S, Tecumseh, Kohler, and Deere equipment. There’s a lot of equipment all over the world that people are trying to keep running because unlike here in America, they can’t just throw old stuff away. So I think a lot of this repro stuff is not designed to rip off Americans with cheap crap, it’s made to actually work.

I’ve been buying all my Stihl reproduction carbs from one supplier and I’ve done about 10 of them where they not only started with no adjustment but tuning them took about 30 seconds they were so close.

Good job keeping the old lift running.

Stress definition: The minds ability to override the bodies desire to strangle the living sh!t out of someone who desperately deserves it!!

From the we can change yer oil faster than anyone while you get your toilet paper mall in the next town I get the honor to finish their f-up and they are dang lucky this thing held oil long enough to make the ten mile trip!!
The retar,er,uh, the tech managed to strip the drain plug and tried replacing it with a larger self tapping type which is okay mind you but I am guessing he freaked when the plug got tighter as it went in deeper and quit.
Seeing that it still leaked because the brass washer wasnt sealing yet he wrapped it with black tape and called it good.
The low oil level light was on in less than ten miles and the customer asked me to take a look at it, here ya go,look for yourself.

The two shots of a piston top, 2001 Jaguar XK8 with a 4.0 liter V-8.
No compression on this cylinder, gee, I wonder why??
Sheldon works on jag’s???? wtf? is he crazy?? well we all know the answer to that!! I dont care who makes it, bolts are bolts and nuts are nuts and yes I am!!
I was going to pull the head to see what came apart or got ran through the intake manifold but the customer wants another engine installed instead of messing with this one, it will be here next week.

For those of you who wonder why I would take something on like this, my first eight years as an auto tech I worked in a foreign car shop, Volkswagen, Fiat, Suzuki, Triumph, Datsun, Austin Healey, Austin Martin, Rolls Royce, Audi, Bentley, Mercedes Benz, it was amazing to me what rich college kids drove back in the late seventies and early eighties!!
Anyway, the engine in this thing is identical to a Ford 4.6 and for being in a small convertible its amazingly easy to work on!!
Of course a handle of Jack will be expected for a tip seeing as how the owner brought it to me instead of paying the Jag dealer a hundred bucks an hour more than I charge!! whooda thunk that??

Hope everyone is staying warm and healthy!!

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To start out with, and please forgive me as I forgot to take pics, those who own a 2016 or newer Silverado or Sierra pickup as well as many other models of that year.
If you are having problems with the fuel pump driver module check the harness where it joins the connector as most likely the wires are corroded right there.
The dipshits at GM must of followed fords lead by placing the driver module on the frame by the spare tire,WTF!!

Anyway, 2019 Merc 15 HP four stroke with eight hours on it that supposedly ran last May on a hose….
New owner bought it with 23 days left on Merc warranty and 2 years left on platinum warranty and it wont run.
This is a new customer for us and I wanted him to witness our first step diagnoses, compression test, spark quality test, injector pulse and fuel pressure test.
Zero fuel pressure, At first I suspected air lock and was curious as to why the fuel was red in color, heavy dose of Marvel mystery oil.
Marvel mystery oil is a great product and I use it when needed, but it wasnt going to help this motor this time.

To my disdain there isnt any info out there for voltage specs on this motor even though it is four years old so I had to figure it out on my own.
The fuel pump is pulse modulated, meaning it is driven by demand by the ECU, there is a low speed and a high speed to this pump depending on demand determined by RPMS and load.
No fuse or relay is used for the pump, direct wiring from the ECU to the pump.
So, I took the pump out of the vapor separator, figured out the power wire and the two speed wires.

Using a trusty nine volt battery I applied power to the pump motor on both speed legs, all the pump would do is stall immediately.
Knowing that Merc would not warranty a fuel related issue due to corrosion I cut the pump apart after several attempts at trying to clean it, here is what I found and it was a very smelly mess.
The dang armature was seized in the fields, not only that the pump rotor was locked due to heavy varnishing of all parts.
The smell was like gas that was forty years old, pure varnish!!
And you guessed it, both injectors are full of the same stuff.
This is fuel phase separation at its worst thanks to E-10 corn gas,man I hate that garbage!! and its going to cost the new owner around 650 for a new pump, injectors and labor.

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Not saying good or bad but you have a 3 year old motor with 8 hours on it I don`t care what gas you have in it it is going to be a problem. Especially if the fuel was not drained.

Tom P. wrote:

Not saying good or bad but you have a 3 year old motor with 8 hours on it I don`t care what gas you have in it it is going to be a problem. Especially if the fuel was not drained.

A bit late in replying to this, the pump above was backed up by a second one a week later, 2016 Merc 50 HP with 43 minutes on it, pump looked identical inside from what I could see without cutting it apart.
I did some research on this occurrence, it is a combination of things.
The pump runs hotter than heck and will boil the goodies out of the fuel, especially if the fuel is stale !!
Old fuel that has already started phase separation is accelerated by heat !!
This is called heat glazing.

So, the question arises, the pump sits in liquid gasoline and uses that fuel to cool itself, how can it run that hot??
You have to understand these systems are one line systems, the fuel is cooled AFTER the pump, when you are idling around a four stroke engine doesnt use much and the fuel surrounding the pump just about comes to a boil, it doesnt come to a complete boil as the fuel is under pressure, think pressure in a pressure canner or steam boiler, the more pressure the more heat it takes to bring a liquid to a boil.
When you shut the engine off, it continues to cook the fuel creating a mess.
Pulse modulated pumps as used on motors that dont require a battery to run are actually a bit worse about doing this, I can only speculate that at low pump speeds there is more heat generated due to current loads on the pump.

And once again, I will always give my fellow man an A for effort when trying to do something on their own.
Somedays you have to wonder though, if you have eyes that can see, why cant they see that this doesnt look right??
The description I got was,,,,,,, it peed like an old man, dribble dribble, partial stream and a whole bunch more dribbling, sigh, I know what he means!!
I can understand if you took something apart and there wasnt anything to go by, you would at least ask someone? YA YA I know, damn the rod bolts, full speed ahead, after all, we are men!!
( and this old farmboy is just as guilty ) well, way back when.

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They had cameras back then for you to take a pic of your handy work? WOW! Even before dirt??

Denny O wrote:

They had cameras back then for you to take a pic of your handy work? WOW! Even before dirt??

Denny O, yes, it was an artists rendition of what I had chiseled into a stone slab after he scrubbed the moss off of it, soaked it in water and had a fifth grader color it in.

How old am I ?? part of me is billions of years old, part of me is very near sixty years old, and that part if you count the hours I have worked in the trades since I was fourteen years old has over 120 thousand hours of hands on experience, and that doesnt count the after hours and on weekends helping buddies or family out.
Then we must add over 6 thousand hours of experience working in aviation.
Sigh, and growing up on a farm, my body has aged ten years more than my city brothers who dont know what hard work is, now, that said, dont any of you city boys take that the wrong way please as I have worked beside many of you!!

The last couple of weeks has had me as busy as ever, I would’ve thought after being in business for two and half years I would have all of the riff raff sorted out by now that no one else would take on but it keeps showing up !!
Where to start?,, The cannon plug, this is on a Merc 15 on the back of a small pontoon that of all things is used to spray aquacides, no kidding, it has fifteen foot spray booms on each side.
The owner put the motor on himself and it wouldnt run above an idle without the rev limiter kicking in, I found this when I went to hook up my remote switch and guess what?
No, the fix wasnt this easy !!, sigh, it never is!!
After I cleaned it all up the motor still wouldnt rev like it should so I started going through his wiring job at the motor, I found the pink wire that comes from the ECU that is there to connect to the main harness forward to the low oil pressure warning light at the helm was hooked directly to ground…

The carb entrance picture, do you see the little red straw in the throat???
That little straw caused quite a bit of excitement loading the boat, the guy had been running all over a big lake for three days without issue, dang good thing too!!
But it could of went really wrong anywhere, he was putting the boat on the trailer, he goosed it to get a run for the trailer and the throttle stuck at five thousand revs.
I bet it scared the poop out of him with the boat thrashing wildly with the bow being a pivot point, so many things could of went wrong but thankfully he had his wits about him and shut the key off.
That little straw got sucked into the carb and lodged against the reed plate and under the butterfly keeping all three carbs partially open on a 90 HP Merc motor.
He did manage to pop the linkage off of the oil injection pump and bend the crap out of it while trying to manhandle the throttle, its a wonder the motor didnt scatter.
A new oil pump linkage adjusted to specs and believe it or not the motor sounds good.
That straw got there last year when the owner was fogging the motor and the straw popped out of the nozzle, owner believed it wouldnt do any harm and just lay in the bottom of the airbox.

The fuel pump pics, you have seen me post these before, this one of the worst ones I have seen in a while so I thought I would share it,notice the sand also, it came off of a 2002 150 HP Optimax with 41 hours and 18 minutes of run time!!!
It has been sitting for three years now and I am bringing it back from the grave, sadly both electric fuel pumps are seized tight from rotten fuel, take a look at the bearing carrier, plum full of mud daubers nest all of the way around,I bet that would’ve caused a performance issue if you tried running it before cleaning those out.
This boat also has a kicker on it, a carbed four stroke, both motors got new impellers as they had never been changed since new!!! the dang things are twenty years old!!!
I’m waiting on the electric pumps and hope to post the successful salvation of this rig next weekend.
Denny O was there the day I ran all new fuel lines, he got to see the mess I have been blessed with,ugh!!!

The Evinrude lower unit, guy brought it saying it wouldnt shift,gee, I wonder why?? the pic is after I blew some of the sand out, you can still see how full the shift rod cavity was when I started.
There was so much sand in it that after several attempts by the owner shifting it before it quit that it drug sand through the shift shaft bushing and seal,
not much left to rebuild without spending around seven hundred on a thirty year old motor that is only worth about three hundred bucks.

I hope everyone is having a great spring !! thanks for stopping by!!

Fuel pump pics courtesy of Orfield Studios Ltd

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rest of the pics

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I’m surprised you didn’t have a coupla cats drop by to use that OMC sandbox to do their buisness.

I’m sure ALL of those ran perfect last time they were used.

MX1825 wrote:

I’m sure ALL of those ran perfect last time they were used.

You would not believe how many times I hear that!
But when they get it back they can’t believe the difference.
Funny how issues over time creep up seemingly unnoticed until it’s almost too late.

So this year like the last two years I get asked quite often to sort out misdiagnoses or incorrect repairs made by others.
This is one I finished up this past week, tritoon with a 115 Merc on it.
Motor ran very poorly from being overly rich, the shop that worked on it replaced three of the four sparkplugs ( I still cant figure that out ) and when that didnt fix it they put in four injectors.
Now dadgummit a simple fuel pressure test watching for pressure loss would of shown if the injectors were leaking or not, Wth!
Sadly the other shop gave up on it and billed them over fifteen hundred for the work they did and still didnt fix it.

I hooked up my gauges and MEDS unit, started the motor and within seconds I recognized the problem, the engine was sucking raw fuel right out of the fuel pump module.
A simple thirty three dollar hose, two clamps and about two hours labor had it running again the right way, well, except I had it running long enough this time I realized it wasnt pumping any water….

So, I removed the lower unit to find this, UGH!! I wonder how long the motor had been running like this!!
Not only that, it was supposedly winterized last fall when the other shop gave up and put it in their storage area, how did they not catch this???
If that isnt bad enough the motor flopped side to side like the steering linkage wasnt hooked up, steering linkages are a very important safety issue that needs addressed before releasing it back to the customer.
The seastar hydraulic steering system had lost all of its oil thanks to bad end cap seals.

Parts list when I was done, fuel pressure regulator reference hose, impeller, and a rebuild kit for the seastar hydraulic steering system.
And yes, I cleaned up the oil mess on the steering cylinder,motor, and hull.

Thanks for stopping by! and have a safe Memorial day weekend everyone!

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The client should print this out and stop at the previous shop and ask for a explanation. It would be interesting to see how they explain and rationalize their work. In a case like this it’s important to show up in person. A e-mail, letter or phone call makes it to easy for them to ignore the customer. They know they have lost him for future service work so there would be no reason to respond unless face to face with the customer.

Once again, nice work!

Motor whisperer. Great find.

The chaos continues !!
A while back I posted about motors on no wake lakes and one of my fears came to fruition this week.
A motor needs RPM’s not only to build heat for the detergents in gas and oil to work, but the water pump has its job to do as well.
??, yep, it needs the revs to keep crap flushed out of the cooling system!!
Here is the perfect witness to that fact, this motor never sees any revs above 1200,,,,,, and the owner likes to beach the pontoon to chit chat with other pontoon owners on the lake.
Okay, this old farm boy has to ask,, why in the heck dont you walk across the street and just talk to them in the front yard?? I mean most of these folks only live a block away from one another….
Must be something special about being on the water??? maybe one of these days I will understand.

Anyhoo, here ya go, 90 HP 4 stroke Merc, on a 18 foot toon and it started smoking a bit at first, then it started polluting the oil with gas, and soon enough along came water, and a bunch of it in a hurry!!
Even though compression tests showed each cylinder within ten pounds of each other, only half of the rings on the top side of the piston were sealing in the number 4 cylinder, wwwhhaa??
I could write two more paragraphs on what happened here but you can figure out why one side of the piston was cold and the other half hellfire hot, you can use your imagination.

Now, on top of this whole shootn match, number 4 cylinder was filled with water at years end and frozen so solid the motor was locked up, I cannot for the life of me see one crack in the head or block that screams here I am !! Look at me!! but I will tell you, this thing is getting a remaned powerhead.
And yessir, I will pull the drive housing apart to replace both gaskets there between the powerhead and oil reservoir.
If I live to be a hundred, I refuse to believe I will ever be able to say,, folks, I’ve seen it all as someone somewhere will find a new way to effe something up.

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Gas is too EXPENSIVE! I don’t like to run too many RPM’s because it burns too much fuel!

That’s why i don’t idle.Lifes to short to go slow.

I was able to take an hour or two here and there to start putting the powerhead back together shown in pics above, fired it yesterday finally after the parts that had been ordered showed up a month after being ordered.
As I mentioned I pulled the midsection and sure glad I did as the exhaust adapter plate and exhaust tube drains were completely plugged with sand just like the bottom half of the engine was, good grief!!

Starter brush I mentioned out of a 135 Optimax, you can see the black stains surrounding the connector eye, that is arching from a very slightly loose connection.

Merc 25 HP two stroke that has been sitting since 2008, story I get is this, dad bought it new, decided boating wasnt for him and its been sitting since he sold the boat,, ( many questions surrounding that line of thought ).
Anyhow, grandson wants to go fishing so they drag it out of the basement and put it on another boat and it wont start,,, now get this, it dawned on them it might need a gas tank?? no sh!t, you cant make this stuff up.
Brand new tank and lines from an online source cause it was twenty two dollars including the hose and it leaks like a sieve at the connections, thats real safe!!
Motor still wont start so they bring it to me, take a look at the pic, what do you see wrong???
As I said, been sitting since 2008, you can imagine what the insides of the carb smell like,YUCK!!
Carb kit, water pump, and who knows what else will get it running again.

Pic of thermostat opening on a 2013 60 HP Merc four stroke, guy runs aground on a sand bar and nails the throttle, wonders why guardian mode kicks in 21 times trying to get five miles back downstream where his trailer is, its a dang wonder he didnt cook the motor.

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Nice job Cowboy!

My Yamaha T8 needed a new carb (I screwed up the jet trying to remove it ) Yamaha wanted $258 at that time did some digging around and found an over seas Yamaha dealer. Sent them an Email for a carb they asked for pictures of mine to be sure it would fit $69 later and a bolt on replacement with adjustments for high, low speed and an accelerator pump on it. That darn T8 never ran better then when it as new, they don`t have EPA over there so you get a carb that actually works and adjustable.

Sheldon just remember…….if there weren’t people out there abusing their motors there would be no need for guys like you to fix them.

Well done.

It ran two years ago = it started 4 years ago on two year old gas.

I hear similar at work. People think they just fixed the same thing on the garage door “a couple of years ago” and if you look it up it is 6-9 years ago.

Yea I always liked this one from years ago. It’s running just like last year again. Oh it was 4 years ago??

I have to find the pics, but recently I had a 200 HP Optimax in the shop, super sooty spark plugs, ( wrong brand and heat range ) low fuel and air pressures, high temps on one bank and too cool temps on the other,( Poor ECU was confused and didnt know what to do ) AND, low water pressure.
A new reed plate on the air compressor, six plugs, both Tstats, a water pump kit, pump out the wallymal two stroke oil and the 93 octane fuel.
Tremendous amount of problems here, now get this, the owner has had it for two years now and thought,,,,,,,,, 46 MPH was the best it would do and now it wont do 8 MPH.

Sparkles and I met up with friends in Ferryville Wis last weekend and my mind was wrapped around one thing as I let the owner take that boat home for a test drive.
Well, Tuesday I gotta call and it went like this, Doc, I took the boat out while you were gone, and I crushed the throttle, the boat stood straight up and down and was instantly on plane.
Ya, I says, what happened next?? Jim says, Sheldon, I dont have a effing clue to what you did but when the GPS hit sixty per and honest to pete I had a lot of throttle left I got scared and backed out of it!!
He putted around a while and nailed the throttle again, at 63 MPH he shut it down once more, He or I still dont know what this thing will do,,yet.
But ya gotta love those kinds of calls.

Its been one of those weeks, genuine gee whiz bonified parts are, plain and simple, pure crap and not fit for use.
So, three hundred dollars worth of carb kits are useless direct from Merc,, I know that Denny O has seen me bang my head against a wooden post more than once, I am glad he has adopted me in a sense as a kid brother and understands why I do some things….

Give me the weekend folks to catch my breath and I will show some more shi,,, uh, stuff I have to put up with,and to this day, I refuse to be part of the swaptronics line of thought.
Later guys, tired old worn out iowaboy.

Oh, before I forget, our shop is thee gateway into the south end of town, been saving my pennies to dress up the place a bit.
24 hundred bucks later and my roof is done, another 25 hundred and the buildings shell will be done next year.
We did this for the whole town, not just us, We hope you like the blue roof!!!
Northern gray for the shell,stay tuned!!

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