Carb - Warm Start Help

bingo, when you stop the boat look in the flame arrestor, if it dripping fuel, 99% sure it is, its flooding itself. Look in the reference section for the PCM manual for your boat or the ford 351 manual. Both have in depth descriptions of the float adjustment.

Basically the front bowl is held on by 4 larges flat head screws or bolts depending on your year of carb. Take those off with a rag under it to catch the gas that pours. Inside that bowl you will see both the float, most likely a large black plastic thing, and the needle and seat. If you move the float up and down with your finger you should get the idea of how it works. When the boat is off the bowl is full of gas and it pushes the float all the way up, this closes the needle and seat and should keep gas from dripping into the engine. If you let go you will see the bowl drop and the needle and seat open. To adjust there is a little metal tab that makes contact with the needle, bend it down ever so slightly with a small screw driver. Now if you flip over the bowl and let gravity pull the float down it should be just above level. So to repeat with the boat upside down you want the float to be angled up ever so slightly. Level is the "manual recommendation" but as you can see, it seems to have an issue at this point due to the angle of our engines it seems. Dont get carried away, start with a minor adjustment. If that doesnt work, time to replace needle and seat, maybe you will want to do that anyways.

Hope that makes sense and isnt too indepth. Read the manual for pictures. When ready to close up you may need to replace the gasket between the body and the bowl or the nylon rings that seal the bolts. I like to keep a holley renew kit around (or two) it has all of these parts in it.

This seems to be the problem of the year. Maybe someone should do a little walk through, maybe I will, I probably wont.

I have not checked the timing.   Not sure I understand how timing would only impact a warm start after sitting vs a cold start or other warm starts...but it would be simple enough to check.

The boat is actually at our cottage and I won't be there to check anything until next weekend. I just don't want to throw a bunch of parts at it - would prefer to take a structured approach.

Here's the latest on my issue...

I continued to ski with the original symptoms. I didn't have a chance to troubleshoot.   This past weekend, I finally pulled the flame arrestor and was surprised to see the choke wide open at the cold start.



As the engine runs and warms up, it actually partially closes. The engine has run 5 to 10 minutes and warmed up to 170-180.



After shutting off, I did not see any fuel leaking into the carb. I am thinking instead of a flooding situation, that the choke is malfunctioning.

What's everyone think?   And - is this wired backwards or what tis the fix?

Andy
(Still a rookie at the end of the year)

I agree with Joe get the choke adjusted before anything else.
I think it may be way out of adjustment as I cant see the index mark on the black housing, it should be aligned with the little pointer on the body or at least close one way or another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5IBSFgYJE

Thanks everyone - so the key was on at the original start for 30 seconds or so while I pumped the throttle.   I guess I thought it worked off the engine temp and not the ignition, so I wasn't paying as much attention to that.   Can someone explain how the choke should work before and after starting the engine.   I was troubleshooting this before winterizing, so I wanted to post while this was fresh in my mind but won't get to work on this until spring.

The video I posted explains how it works and how to adjust it.

Bumping this back up - specifically around the slow crank on restart.   I didn't get any response to this issue.

After some more searching, it sounds like this can be due to timing or distributor advance too.   At this point, I just want to make sure it can wait until spring and how to rule out any water issues that would lead to problems over winter.

Thanks!