Performance Boating

When I first picked up the Baker Tunnel Hull with the 200HP Mariner it was
fast.

I ran it hard and really enjoyed having one of the faster boats on the
water. Somewhere along the way it lost power. I went from running 70+ to
bearly holding 60 on a good day. With a full load it would lug and only run
about 55 and still feel good.

I was afraid I had over heated it because I tended to run it with the motor
high when going up river to try and minimize damage from submerged sandbars.
I'm pretty good at spotting them and I know where the main ones are in the
sections of river I am really familiar with, but they move sometimes daily.

In the course of that I have found a really good and responsive Mercry
engine mechanic. Rudy of RJ's Performance Marine. He and I have not always
agreed about the source of problems, and like anybody he (and I) have made
mistakes, but Rudy is one of those guys who takes care of his with out
arguing or rationalizing. I don't ever have a problem paying his shop rate.
He also respects the fact that while I am not a Mercury engine mechanic I am
perfectly capable of reading service manual and making intelligent guesses
about problems. He has the practical experience and hands on education that
can often find the real problem, not just what the book says.

Anyway, Rudy and I have been going around and around about why I don't have
the power I should have. That 200 had a rough idle, and a high speed
intermittant miss at or near WOT. One of the written diagnostics shows
these systems can be a problem with the high speed ignition pickup winding
or a flaky CD ignition pack. I did the checks on both of these that I
could, and Rudy has a diagnostic system for testing them on the water at
speed. We both agreed that the electronics checked out ok. That is where
we began to differ.

Rudy claimed that the 2.5L 200 is a high performance motor and that they all
idle rough. Since they made the 2.5L in higher horsepower configurations I
tended to disagree. On top of that when I first got the boat I thought the
thing idled pretty good and started very easy. After all a fuel injected
motor should start easy and idle well.

As to the high speed miss. It was very hard to notice, and because the boat
would jerk slightly when it missed Rudy claimed it was from prop
ventilation. Since it would sometimes happen when cruisng at a steady speed
on glass smooth water going perfectly straight I really couldn't wrap my
mind around the concept in this application.

My gut feeling was that there was an injector problem. Rudy tended to think
I was expecting too much out of my boat.

I ran across an article in the magazine "Bass & Walleye Boats" that talked
about dirty and poorly performing injectors. The symptoms they described
match mine almost exactly. This really reinforced my opinion.

At the time I ran across the injector article Rudy had the lower unit off my
boat so I could send it off to Bob's Machine in Florida for a low water high
performance nose cone installation. I drove out to Rudy's shop early one
morning with the magazine. I opened it to the article and placed it on the
ground in front of his shop door. With a brick on it to keep it from
blowing away and holding the magazine open to the correct page I hopped on
my motorcycle and rode away chuckling under my breath.

Well, Rudy finally found the problem the other day. The electric fuel pump
that pressurizes the injectors was plugged full of crap. The filter screen
was also plugged up pretty bad. So.... We were both wrong. But I was
closer. It wasn't the injectors, but is was a fuel delivery problem. He is
putting in at my request new fuel pump, new screen, new filters and pressure
flushing all the fuel paths.

Over all I am pretty happy with Rudy, but I wish he would have listened to
me at first when I said it wasn't performing properly. I'm sure we would
have found the problem much sooner.

I should be getting my boat back this week. Wish me luck and safe warp
speed runs up the river.
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