woodman4

I’d be staying far away from that place in the future!

You’re the man. I’m gonna try and knock this out this week while the weather is bad. Supposed to be raining here for like 9 days straight

Got any idea what that latch mechanism is called? I haven’t found the right words to google yet to get anything like that to come up.

Sweet, I appreciate you looking those up. I’m going to get on this ASAP. I only trailer my boat through my neighborhood so I’m trying to decide if the locking mechanism is necessary.

Ah, ok. I couldn’t tell if it was part of your locking mechanism or not. I really do think I’ll do this ASAP if nothing else just for the sake of convenience. Waiting on that thing to go up and down is painful. Do you think it absolutely has to have a locking mechanism at all? Is the only risk in not having one the fact that the hatch could fly open while driving? Do you remember what length those shocks are?

Thanks for the link. What is the metal bar running side to side in the third pic?

That was one of my first thoughts after this happened was to put some shocks on the hatch and get rid of the hydraulics. Did you happen to do a write up on that? Know what shocks you used and where you got the locking handle? If you have any pics of that I’d love to see them.

Got it, thanks. I’ll check it out as soon as I can.

Did you have to change the risers when you did this? I’ve heard people say the risers have started leaking and in turn caused the manifolds to do the same thing. And yes it will produce symptoms similar to the ones you are having.

So that breaker tripped and took out the power to your radio and everything electrical as well? Never would have thought that but I will check it out. Thanks

Sounds like it might be a vapor lock issue to me. Very common on those engines around that year. Same thing used to happen to us all the time when we had our Eclipse. We got into the habit of always lifting the cover and letting the boat idle for a couple minutes before we shut it off, and then leaving the cover up while parked to let it cool off as much as possible. Some people also say they run the blower for a couple minutes before shutting down and before starting back up. One other thing you can do if you absolutely have to, on one of the fuel rails there is a valve (schrader?) that looks like the stem for a bicycle tire. It’s there so you can hook a gauge to it and see what your fuel pressure is. If you pull the cap off of it and push in on the valve stem, you will more than likely get a lot of air to shoot out of there. That will help clear the fuel rails out so you can get fuel back in them. Just be careful if you do that because that air/gas comes out of there pretty quick and can make a mess, also can be dangerous if something happens to spark right after you do it, that’s why I say only do that if you’ve tried everything else. It helps to hold a cup or something in front of it to try and catch any gas that comes out. I now have a 98 elite which has the 350 mag mpi, and haven’t had any issues with it vapor locking yet. One thing I’ve done different with this boat is running nothing but non-ethanol has in it. I read somewhere that this helps a ton but I really don’t know why. Worth a shot though if you have some available near you.

When I look it up using your serial number I see it as part number 807757T for the idler puller. The other part number you listed is the tensioner pulley. I just replaced the tensioner pulley on mine which happens to be the same part number as your idler pulley, and I just took the old one to NAPA and they were able to find me a replacement by looking up pulleys for trucks that use the same engine. Here is what I used to look up parts https://www.marineengine.com/parts/mercury_marine_parts/sn/0M310293/33500089S/8184_20

Thanks for the replies. I’m thinking it has to be the battery connections. What else would cause EVERYTHING to stop working all at once? I couldn’t even open the back hatch...blower wouldn’t work, lights out, no radio, nothing After it shut off, I tried cycling the key a few times and when I realized it was totally dead, I went back and checked the battery connections. What I can’t remember is if it started right after I did that or if it still didn’t start and then started when I tried again a couple minutes later. I’m thinking it fired back up on the first try after I messed with the battery connections. I’ll ask my wife and see if she remembers.

This boat has been putting me through the ringer here lately! Got the new fuel pump installed and it is running great. Brought it out today and went for a ride, about 15 minutes in while at cruising speed the boat completely lost power. Nothing would work, couldn’t even open the engine hatch to try and get a look at the motor. We sat there for about a minute or two while I tried to call in some help, reached over and turned the key and it fired up like nothing was ever wrong with it. Drove it a little more and am now hanging out on it back in a cove. Anybody got any idea what would cause that? I assume something electrical and hope it’s just a loose wire or something along those lines, but I don’t know what kind of wire would cause something like that. If anyone has suggestions please let me know. Thanks.

Got it, thanks for the info. I’ll have to go get me a test light tomorrow and try to figure this out. Where should I look to find the starter solenoid? Never had to deal with one of those before