It Worked At Home
To appreciate how the weekend started, I need to give you some history.
In the fall, Andy purchased a fishing boat. He had purchased an engine from my neighbor that I knew. The engine had not been run in over 5 years and probably had not more than 10 total hours on it.
This means the engine was practically new since simple outboard engines can last for decades. So the week before, we mounted the Evenriude to the fishing boat at home and got it started. We also ran it for 5-10 minutes and it worked fine.
Let me repeat, "It worked fine at home."
Something on the way from Lake Zurich to Fremont caused the engine to malfunction. At first, I tried to pull start the engine for about 45 minutes. I have to admit, there were several colorful descriptions of the entire activity at the boat stop. Effectively, the engine would run for about 5 seconds and then stop.
In the meantime, my brother, Matt, came up to go fishing. Matt is also a shade tree mechanic and thinks he can fix everything. So he took off the cover and got to work.
A general rule of thumb when boating, that if the engine is off the cover, there can be nothing positive going on with the engine.
As we progressed, and the engine did not start, saw that Andy was looking over at me. I think he associated my presence with the fact that the engine would not start. Several times, I think I heard him say"
"Never liked him much anyway."
"Good for nothing son-in-law."
"How did I let my daughter marry this fool anyway ?"
For a movie of the engine starting process click here:
Note: Interenet Explorer Only & A Several Second Download
If you look closely at this picture on the left, you can see that Matt was pouring pure starting fluid into the carburetor into the engine.