Carburetor kits.

I had some issues with my Merc. 20 hp on my skiff. My son services small engines for a living, so is my “go to” service guy. He had the carb off in a jiffy and worked on it with carb cleaner, etc. after a bit of back and forth, he got it running but recommended I get a carburetor service kit as the needle valve was sticky. We found this link on Amazon, but I wonder if there is a better source. Please advise if you have one. I typically get parts mailed to Point Robert’s and go across the border (pre pandemic) so look forward to doing that again!





Jim

Jim
On my Honda 40, I had what I thought was a carburetor sticky issue, so went to the Honda store in Victoria for carb kits (3 cyl). They talked me out of doing that without first running a spray can of their Honda carb cleaner through the carbs. That worked!
I also very carefully avoid buying fuel for this outboard where there could be ethanol in it. I will buy premium (so long as it is identified as ethanol free) at the gas pump ashore before buying unidentified marine gas at a marine station. I have found ethanol free at Page's Marina in Silva bay, where the owner told me that they fuel the float planes, so have to carry eth free for them and don't have extra tanks to carry the regular boat gas. I will continue to have that sort of conversation at any marine station that wants my business.

Many carb problems are from varnishing not ethanol fuel...they have done the same fo decade after decade.

Yes be careful with ethanol, not too old, run/drain it from the carb (also good for varnishing....use stabilizer (doesn't do much for ethanol phase separation).

Only once in the last 15 years of ethanol fuel (because I didn't run it dry soon enough) did I ever have a problem with ethanol and my Yammie 8hp 4 stroke.

If it started to run rough, some carb cleaner or Sea Foam and a needle stuck up into the jets was all it ever needed.

In NJ where ethanol fuel has been around for over 10 years where I was an assistance tower, people learned quick and the only problems I saw from the ethanol were visible water getting in the tank or letting it sit in fuel systems 3 or more weeks

I have always removed the carb from my small lawnmower, outboard, chainsaw, etc engines, disassembled them and soaked the parts in carb cleaner overnight. Always worked for me.

David

Jim, that engine and carb look eerily like my Tohatsu 18 Hp, so let me share...
I had what seemed like a carb issue so I ordered a similar rebuild kit and
did a R&R on the carb. Curiously, it seemed clean as a whistle inside but I
did it anyway. When I put it back together, the same issue - fuel leaking
out and the engine seeming to starve and then die - continued. So I took
the carb off again and did the same things, cleaning and replacing the
float, etc, and when I was putting it back on I discovered that the fuel
hose just under the carb had a split in it and was causing all of the symptoms.
Ergo, be sure to thoroughly inspect or just replace the fuel hoses.
It was a very sneaky failure that is sure to show up on many engines of that vintage.

Definitely check fuel lines for starvation issues. Especially if the lines are older and have seen ethanol. They sometimes fail by internally collapsing. They look fine from the outside, but will have limited flow.

Greetings,
NOT marine related but...I had carb issues with my leaf blower, snow thrower and pressure washer (within the last 2 years). I was able to locate kits for all three but it was cheaper in all three cases to buy new carbs from Amazon. Prices ranged from $12 to $31 for NEW (it boggles the mind how the Chinese can do this). Old off-new on. Shazam! Might be the same scenario for marine carbs?

I’ve rebuilt or tried to rebuild more OB carburetors than I’d like to admit to. Our OB/dinghy has been our car/pickup truck/people carrier. Nothing worse than rowing or getting towed back on one of my rebuilds. I gave up “trying” to rebuild the carbs and just replaced them with an oem.

psneeld said:

the only problems I saw from the ethanol were visible water getting in the tank or letting it sit in fuel systems 3 or more weeks

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Egad!
I don't see how you can possibly use your outboard often enough so that your fuel never gets older than 3 weeks!
That just isn't possible, so to deal with fuel that will for sure sit in the carb for more than 3 weeks (months more likely), best to eliminate the problem at the source, NO ETHANOL.

We buy what is called rec gas here for the tractor and snow blower. It is ethanol free and lasts for years with treatment.

I rarely work on gas engines, but get carb kits here:
https://www.carburetor-parts.com/
They always have the kit I need and I never got a bad kit or missing items.

Thanks for the replies, guys. We did check the fuel lines but definitely had fuel coming out of the air intake. I always use marine fuel, stabilized. I believe all marine fuel in Canada is ethanol free, but stand to be corrected if wrong. Sometimes it spends a year. I’m not the best outboard dad. My son has had do,do a number of carb jobs in my garden tools.

Edit: Lepke, I searched that site for both the carb kit as well as the serial number on the carburetor and I get no results.



Jim

koliver said:

Egad!
I don't see how you can possibly use your outboard often enough so that your fuel never gets older than 3 weeks!
That just isn't possible, so to deal with fuel that will for sure sit in the carb for more than 3 weeks (months more likely), best to eliminate the problem at the source, NO ETHANOL.

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Just run it dry or drain it.

I just run it dry while flushing it when I am not going to use it for a week or more.

Not sure anymore but where I was, there was NO ethanol free gas so figuring it out was pretty high on active boaters lists.

After a month or so, I would take the unburned gas in the tank, pour it into a clear container to check for phase separation and put it in a car.

So this is the update on this event. After cleaning out carburetor last September, I considered Larry's advice and called the local Mercury service place last week and got a quote for $1,579 Cdn for an OEM replacement Carb! Yikes! The Carb service kit was $279 with taxes on top of that. Only one in stock. So I held my nose and bought the kit.

Returned with my son and he serviced the carb. So Eric does about 10 carbs a day, servicing small engines (chainsaws, lawn mowers, pressure washers, so on). So this is definitely in his "wheelhouse". The differences in the new when compared with old gaskets and seals were noticeable. The new ones much more supple. Put it all back together. Primed the engine. Engine started first 2 second crank. Brand new marine fuel which I immediately put stabilizer in. I will empty the tanks out come the fall and run the engine until it stops.

Has anyone winterized the carb by running some of this synthetic fuel for chain saws through the outboard?

https://www.aspenfuels.us/

BTW, I think this is the same type of fuel the Luftwaffe used in for aviation fuel during the war. Dad bombed some of those synthetic oil plants during the war.

Jim

Personally, for all of my carb-ed engines (large and small), I winterize by drowning it in fogging oil at the last shutdown. Getting the carb nice and oily inside helps keep things from gumming up. Tank gets topped off with stabilized fuel. I've yet to have an engine not run fine on the same fuel at the beginning of the next season.

JDCAVE said:

Has anyone winterized the carb by running some of this synthetic fuel for chain saws through the outboard?

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Not sure about that stuff, seems they're pushing the "green" angle, not stability.

I have been using the "engineered" fuel they sell around here at the big-box home supply stores, and even WalMart. The brand I see most is TruFuel. The sell both regular and pre-mixed, in quarts and gallons. It's not cheap.

I use it in all my small engines now for the last tank of the season. For the dinghy I use it any time I'm not out cruising or using it a lot.

So far it's worked great. I never see varnish or gum in the fuel systems or carbs. Everything starts up easily at the start of the season. It smells to me like the "white gas" Coleman used to sell for their gas camping lanterns and cooktops.

With all respect to your son Eric, I would never buy a carb kit unless I could buy it for $20 or less. I respect though that if you are doing ten a day it is a whole lot easier to throw in a new kit than the following.

The only things that could possibly deteriorate that might be useful to replace in those kits is the soft stuff: gaskets, tubing, etc and the only thing that I have replaced is the fuel hose and that doesn’t come in those kits anyway.

So unless the gaskets are destroyed, soak everything overnight in carb cleaner, dry, reassemble and fire it up.

David

No the synthetic fuel is not cheap at all. But Eric says it makes a big difference in the small machines he has serviced. In not thinking of running the outboard with this fuel. Only flushing out the carburetor with it end of season.

DavidM said:

With all respect to your son Eric, I would never buy a carb kit unless I could buy it for $20 or less. I respect though that if you are doing ten a day it is a whole lot easier to throw in a new kit than the following.

The only things that could possibly deteriorate that might be useful to replace in those kits is the soft stuff: gaskets, tubing, etc and the only thing that I have replaced is the fuel hose and that doesn’t come in those kits anyway.

So unless the gaskets are destroyed, soak everything overnight in carb cleaner, dry, reassemble and fire it up.

David

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What you suggested was what we did last fall. It still ran rough. As I said. Eric’s handled a lot of carburetors over the past 15 years or so. Probably 1000’s. I went with his advice.

Jim