Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Wow the end of the month???? Motor? Generator? Neither????

We were going to put the outboard on the dink using our main halyard this morning when Eric came by and said… “Why don’t you try it out in the tank first?”
Sounded good to me.
Heck if we got it on the dink, then couldn’t start it, we’d have to get it back off to return it to AJ when he got here.
This way we didn’t have to worry about dropping it into the murkey water of the marina channel and scraping it up trying to get it off the concrete wall, onto the dink, and then back off again all without any damage to it or ourselves. Eric might clown around sometimes (he has a sharp wit) but I never doubt that he knows what he’s talking about.
“See if can start it.”
“See if YOU can start it.”
“If you can’t, there’s no sense in trying to put it on the dinghy.”
He also felt we should have a swing arm for loading the motor onto the dinghy – no matter what motor we were using (I’d told him how we get our motor on and off the dink and he just shook his head and said we should be using a swing arm even for our little motor).
Anyhow, we got the 8hp into the cart and took it over to the test tank.
We got it maneuvered and up and into the tank, hooked up the fuel line, ran through the procedure to prime it.
Wayne gave it several yanks…
Nothing…
Eric came by and asked if I’d tried it yet? I said no. So I primed it, and tried to start it too… nothing.
The guys had a pretty good chuckle watching me try to start it.
I finally put my foot to the tank to get all the leverage I could.
Did it help?
You bet yah… at least in the laugh department.
I dang near dumped over the tank, AKA plastic drum yanking the starter cord…
Okay….
We checked to make sure the air vent was open on the gas tank, the bulb was squeezed (it was incredibly hard), it was in neutral, etc…etc…etc… Then Wayne tried again as Eric watched with a bemused grin, then I tried, then Eric tried… ouch!
I couldn’t start it;
Wayne couldn’t start it;
Eric couldn’t start it;
Eric called AJ to tell him we couldn’t start it and told us that if AJ was selling it to us, then he should be here and make sure it started. Good point...
While we waited for AJ to show up, we wandered through a few rows in the storage yard, looking at motor davits, to see what people used to raise and lower their outboards. While we were doing this and talking about our options we noticed AJ was there with the motor. He got it started after a couple yanks when we got there, and it sounded like it was a powerful little motor once it was running.
Wow!
But was this something we wanted?
We couldn’t start it…it was a good price, but was the same age as the one we were replacing.
It just didn’t seem to dependable if when we went to try it out we couldn’t start it annnnd it was a mother to lift…
After some discussion, Wayne told AJ we weren’t interested in it because we couldn’t start it. AJ said the guy had put $200 into it to tune it up but hey…we couldn’t get it to work…
He said that if we gave him ours in trade, we could knock a little off the price. But we didn't think so...
Back to the drawing board again. I let my fingers do the walking on the internet… I did find a Colman model to look at in a sporting goods store called Dicks. They had a floor model and one still in the box.
So, lets see if I can find a carb and how soon we could get one here, or see if the Colman looks like it’s okay or a piece of ballast like I’m thinking all small engines are at this point.
Oh yah…
Our generator…
forgot to mention that we still don’t have that back either…
How long does it take to do a tune up and oil change?
Wonder if he found another blockage in the lines.
I wouldn’t doubt it, since we had fuel problems with the motor and generator last season.
I know Wayne had problems starting the generator last year so at the end of the season he made sure that all the fuel was emptied and burned out of it this time. We’re hoping that the tune-up and clean-up will have her running like a champ (if we get it back LOL). I am disappointed that the outboard wouldn’t start for us today but the weight kinda bothered me too. It just didn’t feel very dependable though…