Marinette Boat Forum

I troll for walleyes with one engine and am having problems with the engine dying after a short time, getting worse each year. Could the ethenal in the fuel be causing the problem. Mike

First off, welcome to our forum Mike!

We are going to need a little more info from you. First go to the top right of the page click on your user name, go to user control pnl, profile, edit signature, then put a signature with all your boat info like the rest of us.

I am going to guess that the idle circuit in your carb has trash in it. How long has it been since you did a good tune-up...new distributor cap, rotor etc.....

I had the boat tuned up last year, new distributor cap and the timing checked

How long does the engine take to conk out? Does it restart right away? How does it run otherwise? I've heard fisherman on the Great Lakes complain that idling with the old style alternators and running the electronics we have these days discharges the battery.

Ballast resister may be bad. We still don't know what year your boat is When it dies does it crank back up ok? It may be time for you to upgrade your ignition system to a modern system. A new distributor would eliminate a lot of problem areas. Lots of threads on here and on marineengines.com on how to do it. I did it several years ago because of chronic engine loss. Best money I've ever spent.

When we first had the boat we cold troll for hours until we drained the juice out of the batteries, now it shuts down in a short time, it starts right up. boat runs great at speed. have a mechanic looking at right now will give an update. Mike

Update on my idling problem. the mechanic pulled the distributors and found the screens in them were 60% plugged, I didn't know there were breathing screens in them. He did another tune-up and the boat runs fine . Thanks for your input and I hope my solution helps someone else. Caught 11 walleyes on my test run. Mike

I'm glad he got her going again. I'd like to hear about the process of determining the percentage of screen blockage.

Great that it is running again. Now the screen issue. I am assuming you have a point type distributor. Sounds like the condenser was getting too hot and breaking down. Point type distributors must have screens on the vent for U.S.C.G approval. The screens purpose is a flash suppressor, thus not allowing a spark /or arch from the points from exiting the distributor causing a potential explosion.

Later electronic distributors many do not have a vent thus no screen since there are no points generating an ignition source.

Thanks for the follow up. That would be an easy one to miss!

Safe boating,

dave