OK, it's not on my CV, but on my dads Silverline. it a 1981 with a Merc 228. It's been not wanting to idle since he bought it last year. We use a kicker motor for trolling so it hasn't been a big deal. Well, Friday it died comming into the launch and wouldn't restart. I had it lined up pretty good, we drifted up to the dock better than ever. Nobody even knew we weren't under power.
I changed the plugs, they looked great, but changed them anyway. The fuel filter was a bit dirty, changed that as well. It ran good in the driveway, so I packed up the timing light and a tach to hook up for ease of seeing it back by the motor and went out for some night fishing. The manual says to set timing to 8*btc idle @ 650rps while in the wate, in gear, throttle cable removed from stud. Well, I got the timing to 8*, was @ 11*, and the idle down to 700. Any lower and it'd die. I started to adjust the port side idle mixture screw on the Quadrajet. Turning it in, it started to run a bit rough, so I noted that at 2.25 turns from seated. I then started to back it out. At 2.75 turns, it ran as it always did. Now, I expected the rps to drop because of a rich mixture at some point, but I can turn it out up to 12 turns without any change. I set that one back to 3 turns and went onto the starboard mixture screw. It acted the same way, only it lost some rpm's at about 2.5 turns. I know the answer is to rebuild it, but was wondering if an Edelbrock or Holley wouldn't be a better choice for it. I keep hearing horror stories about Quadrajets.
I didn't even bother looking into the ignition yet. While adjusting the timing, evey once in a while #1 wasn't firing for 1 or 2 revolutions. I did put in new plugs and wires this spring, it has the petronics in place of the points. Some time after it gets a bit less muggy here, I'll pull the cap and replace. I just figured I'd throw that out just in case somebody can let me know what else I can look into if'n that's not my problem.
The curse of the Salmon-A-Rama still holds. My old boat crapped out on me every year at some point during the contest. Now his crapped out.
On a side note. At least I don't feel too bad, there's pretty much no chance on catching the biggest fish. A guy fishing about 200 yards from us cought what could be the world record Brown Trout.
http://dev.www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/98619539.html