1997 Johnson Ocean Pro 70HP problem

[justinfisch01]

Hello everyone...as I am a very active member on a bunch of other fourms I know how some people get when new people start off by asking questions, but that is what led me to this site so here is goes. ....

I recently bought a used 18' CC with a 97 Johnson Ocean pro 70hp. I took it out for the first time and it ran flawlessly...that day before I went out I put roughly 10 gallons of fuel in it. I trailered it a good distance this weekend and put about 15 gallons in the night before I went out. That morning when I launched the boat it took two tries to start and then it started. I let it warm up for about 10 minutes and headed out through the marina. It ran fine al the way out until I was about to turn the corner to open water. I turned the corned and throttled up and the motor ran like normal for about 20-30 seconds and then died. Had tons of trouble restarting and only got it started a few times in which when I put it in gear it would stall. I had to be towed in. So when I finally get home I hook up the muffs to flush and to see if it will start. Its does...starts right up. Goes into and out of gear, revs up in neutral just fine.

So I started the motor again last night on the muffs and let it run for a couple minutes. I shut it down and waited about 5 minutes and then pulled the plugs. All three of them dripped with oil. What would cause the oily plugs and the motor stalling on me?

Thank you to everyone who looks and comments in advance

[boats.net]

When the engine stalled did you pump primer bulb when tring to restart? May have problem with VRO pump if have to pump bulb to restart.

[justinfisch01]

Yes..I actaully had a buddy doing it bc we were in a pretty hairy spot to loose power in...drifting fast out of the inlet. I felt it once in the maylay and it was not "hard" as I could sqish it some.

My short list of things to do is check for water in the fuel, change plugs, fuel filter, gas/water seperator filter. Possibly change fuel lines.

I am also going to temporarily disconnet the VRO and run on fresh mixed gas oil from a porable tank and see if its any better

[justinfisch01]

So pulled the gas/water seperator filter last night and poured its contents into a jar. The contents seperated quickly and I was left with the top 1.5 inches of the jar with gas and the bottom portion filled with brown cloudy water. About 2.5 cups worth! I have no idea when the filter was changed last but I am thinking that since I had more weight in the boat that there just wasn't enough fuel able to make it through the line, instead it was sucking the water out of the filter causing the stall. I siphoned about 1 gallon of gas out of the tank and put it in a clear glass jug. After that sat for a while there was a tiny layer of water at the bottom and the gas was cloudy. I changed the filter and with the fuel line disconnect I used the primer ball to suck out the gas in the tank and pass through the new filter and started filling up other glass jugs. This time it was perfectly clear with no seperater at all. Once I got all of the gas out and ran through the new filter I let it sit. Mean while I removed the new filter and emptied the contents and out of that I got about 2 oz of water.

Conclusion....I think that the water/gas seperator filter was just too full causing gas to pass though and either pick up some of the water in the filter and deliever that to the motor causing my problems. I replaced the filter yet again last night and ran the motor on the filtered gas and it seems to have corrected the problem. I will sea trial tomorrow morning