In-laws recently bought a 2003 mercury 40 elpto. I did the plugs and impeller and changed the gas. Runs great and starts fine warm but is a pain to start cold. Wondering if there might be some particular tricks or needed fixes to this engine.
Are you priming the bulb until it’s firm?
Tindall, send me your motors serial number so I can see what enrichener that motor uses.
It could be as simple as the key switch is bad in the choke circuit part of it or the enrichener itself is bad.
Possible causes. Any carbureted motor motor.
Choke is DELIBERTLY disconnected.
Miss adjusted too lean.
Idle mixture screw set too lean.
Idle speed is set too low.
Electric choke is not connected or defective.
Computer engine ? Get computer codes.
I looked up that motor. It has the well known crappy …..Squirter / solenoid choke……It is NOT A TRUE CHOKE… It is found on a lot of engines. It can NEVER keep a cold engine running after the engine starts.
It ONLY SQUIRTS a stream of solid gasoline into the engine ….EACH TIME…… the choke switch is pressed. So you have to press the choke button whenever you hear the engine getting ready to stop. The system is NOT NOT EVER…. intended to be a TRUE steady running choke . Each push of the ignition key .. DOWN COMPLETLY ….Gives the engine another squirt of raw wet gasoline.
It has no way of running steady. You have to figure out when a new squirt of gas is needed to keep it running.
A LONG PUSH DOWN will … NOT…… keep the engine running !!!!
Squirt release…. squirt release………… It is that much of ODD BALL choke.
DIY people pull the tubes off play with it . Then connect a good unit back up…………..WRONG WAY with the hoses.
Mos dealers have NO ONE to check it out or re connect it correctly. Good luck
Thanks – I’ll try some more with it. Here is the serial:
20220704_102121-scaled.jpg
tindall, that system uses an enrichener, see part number 31 in the link.
One wire is ground, the other is your positive wire, hook a test light to the power wire and have someone turn the key to on and at the same time push the key in, your test light should light up, if not, you have a bad wire, connection or even a bad switch.
Another test I want you to do is if you have power, check the ground side as well, if the test light still lights up you have a bad ground.
If everything checks out okay then the enrichener has failed.
If you have any questions PM me your phone number and I will walk you through it.
https://www.marineengine.com/parts/mercury_marine_parts/sn/0T729417/1043412AD/3373_90
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