Post by freezerfiller on Feb 28, 2021 20:24:22 GMT -6
I replaced my fuel water separator as part of my winter maintenance (mainly because it was about to rust through). I decided to take the whole freezer family out to the lake and catch some crappie. Of course I had forgotten about the separator change until about 300 yds from the ramp when the motor started choking and coughing and wouldn't plane. I suddenly remembered that there was likely a large amount of air in the fuel line and that was the cause of my woes. So I decided to go slow and found that as long as I kept it below 3000 rpms, I had no issue, but when I tried to give it more, it would come and go from full power to half power intermittently. Well a few white bass later, the condition seemed to improve, and by the time I got back to the boat ramp, it seemed to be doing much better. In fact I passed the boat ramp and ran about a mile and a half at full throttle with no issues. So I get back to the ramp no wake zone and put it in neutral, rev it up and the starvation sound is back at 3000 rpm everytime it hit 3000. I decided to spend my Sunday diagnosing this issue. I did everything we talk about on this forum to isolate the issue. I pulled the pickup tube, I ran straight from a separate fuel tank, no matter what I did, I'd rev it up in N at the house and it would not go above 3000rpms without sounding like it was being rev limited. Much more computerized that the issues at the lake. A long story short, I finally searched "3000 rpms in Neutral Suzuki outboard" It turns out that the motor is rev limited to 3000 rpms in Neutral. So all of my problems were initially due to air in the fuel system. I had worked them out, but when I put it in N, it made me think it was part of the issue. I'll take the boat out on the water later this week, but I'm sure I convinced myself that I had a problem when I had already overcome it.
