Stazi
07-09-2012, 10:28 AM
So on Friday evening we decided to run out to the sand bar for a swim considering it was 105°F.
So we jump into the bump, lower it into the water, start her up and start heading out the canal.
As soon as I put it in gear and started to move, the motor stalls. No biggie I thought, mustn't be warmed up yet, so I start her again and idle out of the canal and hit the lake and go to give it gas to get on plane and bam, she stalls again. This time I'm thinking this isn't good so we fart around get her started again and then decided to idle to the sandbar where I can take a dip (as I'm sweating like a whore in church at this point), and then look into what's going on.
We get to the sandbar, I anchor up and flip oopen the doghouse to see what's going on.
I start her up again and she's idling but rough, so naturally I assume that there is a fuel issue going on. So I pull the +ve off the fuel pump and see that it make no difference to the way it's (barely) running. Great...I think, fuel pump is shot and I have 2 buddies coming over first thing to go wakeboarding and surfing tomorrow. So after 15 minutes of swimming and cooling off we putt back into the canal and to our dock so I can double check the pump and power wires with a multimeter to confirm that it is shot. At this point it's 7:30pm so my options for going to the auto parts store to get a pump are starting to dwindle.
I run into the house, grab the multimeter and head back out to the boat and check the voltage going to the pump. It gets about 11V at crank and 13V while running, so of course anyone would think the pump is shot if it's not pumping, right.....the funny thing here and key point to note, is that every time I would crank, it would start, so somehow it was getting gas...but more on that later.
So I run back inside, jump on the iPad and search the Moomba forums for info on pumps. I confirm I have a Carter 152-875 fuel pump which cross references to an Airtex E84839 (and P4839). I run out to the local Murray's and Autozone, and none of the local places carry one so I search online and find an O'Reilly's in Centerline 45 minutes away that has one. It's now 9pm and O'Reilly's closes at 10pm. I call them to confirm they have it in stock, so I don't drive all the way from Commerce Twp, for nothing and sure enough they do. So they hold it for me and I zoom out there and get it at 9:50pm.
Next morning I wake up and start swapping out the pump. It's 8am and already 95°F! In the process of taking off the hoses I run into isses with the fitting being too tight, so I decide to unscrew the hose from the fuel rail feeding the Holley carb. Like and idiot I don't hold the hex fitting on thre fuel rail with a wrench and instaly crack one of the pipes. MF'er!!! Now, I'm crapping myself. Luckily I remember there is a NAPA nearby and a speed shop next door so one of them is going to carry a fuel rail for this thing. So I remove the feul rail and run out to NAPA. They have two rails in stock. One with a fuel pressure gauge and one without. The one without is cheaper but, it has the wrong spacing for the feed pipes that connect to the bowls, so I get the one with the fuel pressure gauge which turns out to be a plus, later. So at this point IU spent $85 on a pump, $56 on the fuel rail and $10 on a new 1/2" inline fuel filter.
I head back to the boat get it all together and crap....it's still not working right! Luckily with the fuel pressure gauge, I can see it builde pressure 3-4psi during crank, but as soon as the engine catching and it runs, bam I get 0psi! WTF?! At this point my freinds show up on the dock and ask me what I'm doing. I give them the story about my dilemma and they understand - they're both boat oowners and now the constant issues we all face with boats (holes inthe water we throw money into). After trying to start it a few times again, all of a sudden I'm getting 3psi while it's running...great! Lets' go boarding!
So I turn it off thinking maybe there was air in the line or some crap and we load up and get ready to head out.
We back out of the hoist and start up the canal, I lift the dog house agin to check the pressure and my heart sinks 0psi again! :mad:
So we fish out the oar and turn the boat around and head back....I try to start it again and it's working so we decide OK, lets not turn it off and go boarding. So we head out and ride for about 1.5hrs with no issue. and head back to the dock...all the while we are wondering what the issue is?
My buddy call his friend who is a boat mechanic to ask him about what we should look for. He mentions checking the voltage at the pump during crank and then while running we tell him we did and it seem fine, so he says maybe the sock on the pickup it clogged, so we take everything out of the rear locker and remove the panel to access the fuel pick up. Now, I don't know how they put these tanks together, but when you unscrew the pick up tube and try to remove it - there's no way you can pull it all the way out to check or replace the sock - it won't fit through that narrow 1/2" hole. Nonetheless I am able to look down the tube and see the sock it perfectly clean....so WTF? it's not that, and the inline filter is new too!
We're so confused at this point so My buddy Dave calls his mechanic uncle, this time, who says to check the power going to the pump when it's running. We say "Yeah we chacked that already and it's getting +13V". Nonetheless I decide to make 2 jumper wires so we can run direct from the battery to the pump to see WTH is going on, because with the engine running you cannot hear the pump at all.
Now THIS is the first thing I should have done!
We connect the old pump directly to the battery and bam, it works....hmm...so lets check the new pump that's installed, yep, that fires up when we connect it and we get +3psi on the fuel pressure gauge. So we are totally confused. When it's running its getting voltage too(?). So Dave's uncle tells us that the power should come from a oil pressure safety switch that closes the circuit and sends power to the pump after the motors starts - during cranking the power comes from a separate source - the starter circuit. We decide to jump the two fittings with our jump wire and sure enough we get the pump to work!
So this POS oil pressure switch is what is causing all the problems....now either it had a very poor connection that showed 13V, but could support any amperage draw from the pump, or it was intermittently working - either way it's effed. So off we go to NAPA again to get a new switch.
At first the guy is looking up parts in some marine catalog and tells me that it's going to take 3 days to get this switch. I tell him, that I could care less if it's "marine" and just to get a regular 2-terminal oil pressure switch, so he says "OK, but I don't know if it'll work" For $10 I'll take the risk - either that or we'll make a jumper wire until I can get one in.
So we run back with our new switch, install it and viola, everything is working again. SOB! That fiasco caused me to have an ulcer and cost me $160+, but at the end of the day we learned something...at least I did. Don't assume anything test everything first before you start randomly changing (expensive) parts!
This is the oil pressure switch I used:
http://partimages.genpt.com/largeimages/50924.jpg
http://www.napaonline.com/Catalog/CatalogItemDetail.aspx?R=MPEOP6632SB_0365579324
So we jump into the bump, lower it into the water, start her up and start heading out the canal.
As soon as I put it in gear and started to move, the motor stalls. No biggie I thought, mustn't be warmed up yet, so I start her again and idle out of the canal and hit the lake and go to give it gas to get on plane and bam, she stalls again. This time I'm thinking this isn't good so we fart around get her started again and then decided to idle to the sandbar where I can take a dip (as I'm sweating like a whore in church at this point), and then look into what's going on.
We get to the sandbar, I anchor up and flip oopen the doghouse to see what's going on.
I start her up again and she's idling but rough, so naturally I assume that there is a fuel issue going on. So I pull the +ve off the fuel pump and see that it make no difference to the way it's (barely) running. Great...I think, fuel pump is shot and I have 2 buddies coming over first thing to go wakeboarding and surfing tomorrow. So after 15 minutes of swimming and cooling off we putt back into the canal and to our dock so I can double check the pump and power wires with a multimeter to confirm that it is shot. At this point it's 7:30pm so my options for going to the auto parts store to get a pump are starting to dwindle.
I run into the house, grab the multimeter and head back out to the boat and check the voltage going to the pump. It gets about 11V at crank and 13V while running, so of course anyone would think the pump is shot if it's not pumping, right.....the funny thing here and key point to note, is that every time I would crank, it would start, so somehow it was getting gas...but more on that later.
So I run back inside, jump on the iPad and search the Moomba forums for info on pumps. I confirm I have a Carter 152-875 fuel pump which cross references to an Airtex E84839 (and P4839). I run out to the local Murray's and Autozone, and none of the local places carry one so I search online and find an O'Reilly's in Centerline 45 minutes away that has one. It's now 9pm and O'Reilly's closes at 10pm. I call them to confirm they have it in stock, so I don't drive all the way from Commerce Twp, for nothing and sure enough they do. So they hold it for me and I zoom out there and get it at 9:50pm.
Next morning I wake up and start swapping out the pump. It's 8am and already 95°F! In the process of taking off the hoses I run into isses with the fitting being too tight, so I decide to unscrew the hose from the fuel rail feeding the Holley carb. Like and idiot I don't hold the hex fitting on thre fuel rail with a wrench and instaly crack one of the pipes. MF'er!!! Now, I'm crapping myself. Luckily I remember there is a NAPA nearby and a speed shop next door so one of them is going to carry a fuel rail for this thing. So I remove the feul rail and run out to NAPA. They have two rails in stock. One with a fuel pressure gauge and one without. The one without is cheaper but, it has the wrong spacing for the feed pipes that connect to the bowls, so I get the one with the fuel pressure gauge which turns out to be a plus, later. So at this point IU spent $85 on a pump, $56 on the fuel rail and $10 on a new 1/2" inline fuel filter.
I head back to the boat get it all together and crap....it's still not working right! Luckily with the fuel pressure gauge, I can see it builde pressure 3-4psi during crank, but as soon as the engine catching and it runs, bam I get 0psi! WTF?! At this point my freinds show up on the dock and ask me what I'm doing. I give them the story about my dilemma and they understand - they're both boat oowners and now the constant issues we all face with boats (holes inthe water we throw money into). After trying to start it a few times again, all of a sudden I'm getting 3psi while it's running...great! Lets' go boarding!
So I turn it off thinking maybe there was air in the line or some crap and we load up and get ready to head out.
We back out of the hoist and start up the canal, I lift the dog house agin to check the pressure and my heart sinks 0psi again! :mad:
So we fish out the oar and turn the boat around and head back....I try to start it again and it's working so we decide OK, lets not turn it off and go boarding. So we head out and ride for about 1.5hrs with no issue. and head back to the dock...all the while we are wondering what the issue is?
My buddy call his friend who is a boat mechanic to ask him about what we should look for. He mentions checking the voltage at the pump during crank and then while running we tell him we did and it seem fine, so he says maybe the sock on the pickup it clogged, so we take everything out of the rear locker and remove the panel to access the fuel pick up. Now, I don't know how they put these tanks together, but when you unscrew the pick up tube and try to remove it - there's no way you can pull it all the way out to check or replace the sock - it won't fit through that narrow 1/2" hole. Nonetheless I am able to look down the tube and see the sock it perfectly clean....so WTF? it's not that, and the inline filter is new too!
We're so confused at this point so My buddy Dave calls his mechanic uncle, this time, who says to check the power going to the pump when it's running. We say "Yeah we chacked that already and it's getting +13V". Nonetheless I decide to make 2 jumper wires so we can run direct from the battery to the pump to see WTH is going on, because with the engine running you cannot hear the pump at all.
Now THIS is the first thing I should have done!
We connect the old pump directly to the battery and bam, it works....hmm...so lets check the new pump that's installed, yep, that fires up when we connect it and we get +3psi on the fuel pressure gauge. So we are totally confused. When it's running its getting voltage too(?). So Dave's uncle tells us that the power should come from a oil pressure safety switch that closes the circuit and sends power to the pump after the motors starts - during cranking the power comes from a separate source - the starter circuit. We decide to jump the two fittings with our jump wire and sure enough we get the pump to work!
So this POS oil pressure switch is what is causing all the problems....now either it had a very poor connection that showed 13V, but could support any amperage draw from the pump, or it was intermittently working - either way it's effed. So off we go to NAPA again to get a new switch.
At first the guy is looking up parts in some marine catalog and tells me that it's going to take 3 days to get this switch. I tell him, that I could care less if it's "marine" and just to get a regular 2-terminal oil pressure switch, so he says "OK, but I don't know if it'll work" For $10 I'll take the risk - either that or we'll make a jumper wire until I can get one in.
So we run back with our new switch, install it and viola, everything is working again. SOB! That fiasco caused me to have an ulcer and cost me $160+, but at the end of the day we learned something...at least I did. Don't assume anything test everything first before you start randomly changing (expensive) parts!
This is the oil pressure switch I used:
http://partimages.genpt.com/largeimages/50924.jpg
http://www.napaonline.com/Catalog/CatalogItemDetail.aspx?R=MPEOP6632SB_0365579324