Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

so I was able to take the pontoon out both saturday and sunday this weekend....call it my "social distancing" if you will. So start it up first thing, it idles fine but seems a little low to me. Run it around the river (and it seems to run real well), stop to do some fishing, run it back to the marina and while trying to dock it the motor just won't idle...it dies every single time. I have to rev it up in neutral and while the rpm's are falling i try to shift it but normally by then the rpm's have fallen enough for the engine to stall. Did it both days.
So one thing I saw saturday when it stalled was the tell tale wasn't spitting out water. A quick poke with a wire tie in the tell tale unclogged it and it seemed that the engine would idle, however at that point the boat was already docked so there was no shifting into gear. Sunday the tell tale was working fine the whole time.

Before the pontoon was docked at the river I had it at my house on the trailer...I would run it, it would idle fine, not the smoothest idle but i chalked that up to being an older 2 stroke.
carbs were rebuilt, all new fuel system (hoses, filter, etc...) with fresh non-ethanol fuel and a water separator. it running real good at top speed tells me that the fuel system is working like it should otherwise I would be having issues there I would think.

do you think it's as easy as an idle adjustment? Maybe I'm just over complicating it.

Might of mild overheated and burnt some premix on plugs, I would pull and check them.
I would sand blast them and clean good with brake cleaner non foaming type.

Low speed idle issues I've found often come hand in hand with vacuum issues / leaks. If no leaks can be found I'd then check the float bowl to see it there is any adjustment. If this strikes out maybe a small piece of crud freed up in the low speed passage and is restricting fuel flow.

i'm gonna try and do some of this while docked and without getting in the water...it's still cold for my liking. i know my luck, I'll pull the boat out of the water and the engine will run fine no mater what.

Update!!!
So i got the pontoon back to the house and started looking over the engine. There was some oil in the bottom of the cowl, I've had some show up but just couldn't figure out where. There was a little bit of oil by the oil check valve so i found took it apart and found it was all gunked up. So I cleaned it out and reinstalled it. From reading online if that valve stops working it can cause some issues with oil leaking.

also while I was in there I notice a hose was pinched behind the fuel pump...the hose that runs from the top of the block down to the bottom. Also that hose was no longer attached at the bottom. So i got the hose freed up, reattached to the bottom of the block, and she ran so much better.

Put the pontoon back in the water yesterday and it ran much better, it didn't stall out like before...so we have a victory!