Tune up or more? |
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DEF187
Groupie Joined: August-04-2009 Location: Janesville WI Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Posted: August-25-2013 at 11:06pm |
So it was a fun weekend on the lake when I was pulling a wakeboarder at around 17mph (learning ) when all of a sudden I lost about 2 mph. When I slowed down to pick up the skier I noticed my boat was vibrating more than normal at idle. My first assumption was I lost a cylinder (bad spark plug). I pulled all the plugs and checked the gaps everything looked ok to my untrained eye. After a bit of Googling, it looked as if they could be dry fouling. It had been about 55 hours sense I had changed my plugs so I just swapped them out. I was also talking about this issue with a Mastercraft boat dealer and they suggested changing the points, condenser, cap, and rotor. I bought a tune up kit from him minus the cap and put it in. I was having a hell of a time setting my timing. After some more research I found that he sold me the wrong rotor the ground tab did not go up like the one I took out and the condenser had a wire not a flat copper strip. So now we get to the fun part. I put new heads on it about 4 years ago and in my being a green horn to this I forgot to paint the new heads before I put them on the block! I was able to paint them to help prevent corrosion but they don’t look good at all. So I’m looking for some advice.
1) Should my tune up include the correct points, condenser, rotor, cap, wires (I have owned the boat for 4 years and never changed these), fuel filter (this was changed 3 years ago)? 2) If I’m down for the tune up I feel I should take the exhaust manifolds off and heads to clean them up and do them the right way? What do you have to do to get the intake and heads ready for paint? I was thinking about bringing them into a local engine builder and have them clean them. We have a big mineral spirits tank at work that I could clean them in as well. I just don’t want to screw anything up. 3) I was also thinking about a pertronix “upgrade” but after reading the threads on this sight I’m second guessing myself. (I should have know because it was suggested by another Mastercraft dealer, haha) 4) Oh, one more thing. Towing the boat home I somehow shattered my port side window. I called Larry at CC and he pointed me to George at Marine Glass Specialties. Does anyone have any experience with him? Just opening this up for discussion, I also would like to sell the boat to upgrade to a bigger boat as we are getting more into the skiing and wakeboarding. |
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SNobsessed
Grand Poobah Joined: October-21-2007 Location: IA Status: Offline Points: 7102 |
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My 2 cents - Just get the boat running for now, don't worry about the head paint - it is inconsequential IMO. Get the proper tune up kit from SkiDim. You could also put the original parts back on, run it on the hose & pull plug wires 1 at a time (wear gloves) to see which cyl is bad. Might just be a bad plug wire - you can trade things around to isolate the bad component.
I got a windshield from Marine Glass Specialties. It isn't perfect & they took a long time to make it. They also did a real cheesy job packaging & it was gouged when I got it - they never made good on that (Blamed UPS). I would put a want-post in 'parts wanted section. Someone probably has a spare they can sell you. |
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“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
Ben Franklin |
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phatsat67
Grand Poobah Joined: March-13-2006 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 6157 |
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Your first problem was going to a Mastercraft dealer ;). Usually the first course of action is to dial in all of the regular service variables like cap rotor points wires fuel filter because you need to do those anyways. The plugs you pulled it out look pretty rich. Take a look see down the throat of the carburetor while it is running. If you see any liquid fuel then there is the start of your problems. Check that the choke opens fully.
The actual tune up PCM kit from us comes with all of the needed parts and will be correct. George will probably know if you can duplicate that glass. ( I don't think I have any sport stuff left here). |
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DEF187
Groupie Joined: August-04-2009 Location: Janesville WI Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Sounds good guys. I will be putting in my order tomorrow for that tune up kit and get back to you with an update.
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DEF187
Groupie Joined: August-04-2009 Location: Janesville WI Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Got it working! What a difference the correct points, condenser, rotor, plugs, and plug wires make. I found out through research that the reason I was tripping my 50 amp fuse was because of the raised tab on the rotor was flat. When the 25,000v from the ignition coil was charging the rotor it would take the path of least resistance and probably charge something else inside the distributor cap. So now that I went and got the right rotor the charge goes to the plugs...who knew, haha. Also I called PCM and got the manual for my PLD 351w and it mentioned that if you run 91 octane to set the timing to 10BTDC but if you run 87 octane to set it to 14BTDC, which makes sense because that's where the boat runs the best. Now its just the glass, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Goerge will do it right and in a timely fashion...I will keep you up to date! Thanks for the help once again and enjoy the holiday weekend.
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