Outboards and Ethanol

[TimmS]

A couple of months ago, I installed a 40ph 4 stroke Yamaha outboard on a new boat.It has been trouble since the beginning with not starting and then not running smoothly. The dealer is blaming it all on ethanol saying that the ethanol absorbs water and creates gunk in the carbs. they added a big separator/ filter and cleaned out the carbs and said all was well....1 week (5 days) later it would not start. you can crank, vary throttle, etc, and it will eventually start and run poorly with little power and stall. it runs on two cylinders and coughs, stalls, overheats, speed varies during use. My customer is not happy at all...I'm stuck in the middle. The dealer now says that the engine was "mismanufactured" and we should deal with Yamaha directly. The engine has 9hrs on it now. I ran perfectly for the first couple weeks and never say more than 1 week between uses. What do I do? My customer has a 4 day weekend starting tomorrow and wants to use it! Should I ask that they swap us a new engine? the boat is 5 hrs away from me by car.

Thanks,

Timm

[Saltiguy]

Mercury Marine sells an additive for this. It's called "clean out", or "blast out" or something similer. I had an on going problem with my Yamaha 4-stroke and tried ever other additive with no success. The Mercury product worked - almost right away the engine was humming.

[Terrence Gilhuly]

Sorry about your problem, but I am a little confused.
Did you buy and resell the motor? If you did then there may a warranty issue since the owner is not the original purchaser. Yamaha should be happy to make it right if there is no warranty issue.
The dealer should be happy to deal with Yamaha since he made the mark up on the sale. This is the sort of thing that the mark up pays him for.
I would have the boat owner deal with Yamaha-he may not be happy but I am not sure how you can be blamed in any way.
Are you a builder or dealer? Did you offer some sort of warranty?
I hope you work this out. Sounds like you are stuck in the middle here.

[TimmS]

I had the customer buy it directly, but from my local dealer. the boat is now 400 miles away and his local dealer is not very enthusiastic about working on it under warranty (he didn't get his markup). I am the builder of the boat, but I did install the motor. The only reason I am involved is that the customer waited 9 months while I built the boat and now summer is here and his new boat is sitting at the dealer awaiting service. I am getting unfriendly emails from all parties....

Thanks Saltiguy for that suggestion, we will try it.

The current plan is to have the dealer empty the tank and lines, new filter, clean carbs, fuel stabilizer, additive suggested above...........and then be very careful where fuel is purchased, how it is transported, and how long it is left in the tank.

anything else?

[rbgarr]

Try StarTron fuel additive (blue with enzymes) not the red Stabil. It's 'supposed' to forestall ethanol problems but I can't vouch for that.

http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=6174

Be sure to apply for rebate with coupon.

Good luck.