I'm new here and don't want to hijack this thread, but I'm wondering if the symtoms listed in your quote are usually caused by water in the gas.

I purchased a 97 Moomba Boomerang in the middle of the summer for what I thought was a good price.

Ran fine on the hose in the guys driveway, but would barely start when I got it home. I had a friend, who is a former marine mechanic rebuild the carb. When he took it off there was a gasket missing, and the high speed screw was completely closed. We also found ewater in the gas. I syphoned the water/gas out of the tank, and added dry gas, but it still doesn't idle, and sometimes puts out black smoke. It also sounds like it is backfiring through the carb when running close to WOT. I just had it winterized, but am trying to figure out where to start next spring in getting it running right. My regular marina specializes in outboards, and I've heard some stories that doesn't make me want to take this inboard to them, since their shop rate(like most marinas) is so high.

Thanks

Quote Originally Posted by hclymer4 View Post
Thanks for all the kind words guys! Great advice Maxpower. I pumped what was originally in the tank out and let me tell you... it was bad. Dark brown full of water. After that I filled it up with about 6 gallons of fresh gas and added water remover treatment. Let it sit for a few days, gave the boat a good shaking on the trailer to try and agitate and sediment in there. I syphoned out those 6 gallons and they looked overall pretty good. When I had originally got the motor running in the driveway with a fake-a-lake we had bypassed the fuel tank and simply ran the fuel line into a nice fresh portable gallon of gas. On the way to the lake we connected the fuel line back to the tank and filled it up. Upon the initial start the motor ran awful. Black smoke, choking out, and barely idling. My thoughts are that it had to burn the reminisce of crappy fuel that was still in the lines out because after about 1 minute of that it was like a light switch and ran perfectly. You could just tell that it has gotten a taste of the new gas. So hopefully thats the end of my gas worries.