Friday, March 6, 2015

Karl Resuscitates the Yamaha after a Drowning Accident


Last year's cruise was dominated by problems with the Yanmar motor which powers the White Pepper. This year the main problem has been with the Yamaha 8 HP which powers the dingy Habanero. There is no comparison, of course, but today's event were memorable.

We had the Yamaha serviced at Vero Marine Center and had a rusted throttle cable replaced with considerable expense and delay over Christmas at Vero Beach, FL. That is were the problems started. Performance was great the day after service. However, problems developed soon afterward. By the time White Pepper had arrived at Great Harbour Cay, the motor would barely start and would run only at full throttle. It seemed as if the idle jets were clogged in the carburetor. Some improvement was made by adjusting the idle screw. At this point I had decided to buy a new motor in George Town, Bahamas as the cost of service was exceeding the value of the motor. Also we were limited to motoring no further than we could row back to the boat which is no fun when cruising.

I guess that the Yamaha knew that the end was near and decided to commit suicide. On a very windy and bumpy night the Yamaha jumped off the stern of the dingy into 20 feet of water while at anchor off Lee Stocking Island.

The next morning after discovering the accident a friend took me into George Town were I ordered a replaced motor-- an Enduro Yamaha 8 HP. In the meantime I had to get the motor off the bottom if for no other reason than to prevent fouling someone's anchor.

Conventional wisdom is to take the spark plugs out, turn the motor upside down, hose it down with fresh water, drain the carburetor, replace the spark plugs, and start it right away.

I chose a different path. I partially disassembled the motor, washing and cleaning the parts. The carburetor was exhaustively cleaned. There was considerable debris inside which was probably old “varnished” gasoline. The high speed jet was clean, the low speed jet less clean, and idle jets were clogged. The idle jets are not really jets on the Yamaha—rather they are just holes and tunnels near the choke valve. Steve from Red Boat was very helpful pointing out these fine details that never show up in manuals or You-tube videos. It took all of one afternoon to disassemble the motor and all of the next morning to reassemble it. Finally, I was ready to try to start it. I would love to tell the reader that it started on the first pull, but that didn't happen. I had dedicated myself to 100 pulls on the the starting rope. However, I could not get that far. My sense was that there was still water in the cylinders. I removed the spark plugs and began to pull on the starting rope. A foam of water and WD-40 sputtered out of the holes. Eventually only gasoline seemed to be coming out of the spark plug holes. I replace the plugs with new ones. Here at this point I would again love to tell the reader that the motor started—it didn't. I returned to the 100 pulls. Finally, on the very last pull the Yamaha truly miraculously sputtered to life and ran.

Because I had meticulously cleaned the carburetor the motor actually runs better than before the dunking. I can now idle it down to almost nothing. There are still problems with the motor. Some folks say the 2 stroke engines can last forever. I do not believe them. Things wear out, although I could have taken better care of this particular motor. I do plan to use the new engine. I think, however, that I will keep the old one as a souvenir.

(As an aside, 2 stroke Yamaha motors are reasonably priced in the Bahamas when nothing else is. Yamaha is the only brand available, and they are ubiquitous. I have been told that the price did go up when 2 stroke engines were banned in the US.)





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