I’m still here in the shadows, been busy at the shop and took another leap of faith, I am for now, central Iowa’s only repower center along with being able to do warranty work.
There are two other dealers here but they only want to install new motors on new boats and take care of their own, I get it.
And congrats to the new dealership in northern Iowa who is on board now!!

I will have a couple of stories involving IDO members soon, one is from four hours away? and the other over seven hours away, and I gotta tell ya, the challenges they have presented have been interesting to say the least.

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Run away from a shop that wants to sell you an SEI,run fast,run hard,absolute sh!t.
If you cant find someone shoot me a pm.

You will become a redneck iffn ya live way up nort and start dating gals from the deep south.

bigcrappie wrote:

Iowaboy1, So he will have to bend the float rod to match what he has?

Yes, with universal sending units you can bend and cut the arm wire to match the old set up.

When you touch the wires together you are fooling the gauge into thinking its full.
With your voltmeter, check to make sure you have anywhere from 4.50-5.00 volts on the gauge wire to ground.
If you have correct voltage then your problem is on the ground side, two grounds are used for safety.
If you do not have any power on the gauge wire you have a power problem.
In either case, when you hook up the sending unit it is of high enough resistance it will kill either the ground or power if there is a problem.

I am betting that boat has glass fuses in it, they are notorious for corrosion, you may have a voltage reading until a load is placed on it, the gauge reads because of its low voltage ability even if there is a problem if that makes sense.

If you cant figure it out, PM me and I will give you my cell number and I will walk you through it, its hard for me to convey what I am trying to say in typed words.

Here ya go Nate, see if this will work.

https://www.marineengine.com/products/accessory.php?in=2560570

glenn57 wrote:

I heard a bit ago when I went down to get my fishing license at the Kiess shell here in town that Bernicks, who delivers Pepsi already canceled Monday deliveries.

Good thing I have enough to get through the weekend!!

You bet B-man!! I wasnt going to fail you or the boys!, well, I did sort of, After breathing two smoke all dang day I assumed your motor was one,, and after you corrected me, found ya one!! those folks at boats.net are great to deal with!!

Ya’all asked fer it, forgive me southern vernacular I am trying to get used to EPG’s way of speaking these days since he iz dating that Belle and I have had to go back to my roots so we can talk to each other.

Anyhow, a few things down at the shop this winter, see the hole in the oil filter???? ya, it was blown through after the filter plugged because the oil had over ten thousand miles on it, the owner even forgot that air filters need serviced too and are not permanent, K&N that has never been serviced, the really stupid part??? the owner has been driving this truck for a month with no oil pressure, the sending unit was plugged tight.
Impellers, speak for themselves.

Okay, see the dynopoo in floating on the water??? owner said this 1972 18 HP Johnson started fine but wouldnt accelerate above idle, the fuel looked and smelled like sh!t and had to be over five years old.
New points and condensers, clean the carb, it was full of sludge I have never seen before, and ran the snot out of it for two hours to clean out the entire engine, that pic of the water is the third barrel it went through and the motor is finally coming around, no way its been ran in the last fifteen years, and stink!!! WOW!!
OH, and yes, the one impeller that is missing legs came out of it.

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Tree sap especially pine or fir type trees is like superglue on nose sprockets.
When cutting fresh pines I carry kerosene or diesel fuel with me,apply it with a spritzer bottle as needed.
It helps if you grease the nose sprocket liberally and I mean to the point of the chain carrying the grease around the bar.
All of this said,remove the chain and spin the sprocket,it could be a defective bar but I dont recall ever seeing one in 45 years of owning saws,anything is possible I reckon.

I know its a drive but I know a guy who could hang a new Suzuki on it!
Tiller would be easy,hang it Fri afternoon,spend the night and head home Sat.

Thanks Denny and the rest my IDO family!!
And thank you Sheryl!! the king crab legs were awesome!! and the pie!! me stuffed.
Mojo, thanks for the snow snake medicine!! fit the bill perfectly!!

Thanks Bearcat and family !!
Still looking forward to the pizza one of these days, I gotta get that done soon!

Thanks for the kind words everyone, I try to help anyone I can, I have learned over the years to bs enough with folks to get an idea of what they can digest if I am trying to explain something to them, once I have that figured out I can walk almost anyone through something, iffn I cant, I club em over the head and bring em around to my way of thinking.

My life has been an amazing journey, some of it not so good, some of it great, and a whole heap of it I would do over again!!
I still have a pretty good memory too, I remember going on a picnic with dad and coming home with mom.
If I have to explain that last line…….

Andy, A fuel/water separator is a good idea, especially if you travel a lot and are dealing with unfamiliar fuel stops.
That said for those reading this, smaller motors fuel pumps are not designed to draw fuel through a filter, that is why they are filtered after the fuel pump which most often is a vacuum/pressure pulse type pump.

EPG, the only way I am going to keep the bird out of the cornfields around here is to move up there,,,, and put it on floats.
Man that corn is a biatch on props!!!

Andy, the engineers recommend belt replacement for a reason, a belt is made up of rubber and high tensile threads and they have an age limit.
They are always under tension, and if you look they are cogged, those cogs intersect with the cam and crank gears and those edges wear on one another when the engine is running.
What I have seen most often when someone says, run it, we never saw one break may be telling the truth, or are they too lazy to change it?? it is a bit involved but not a huge deal, about an hour or so to do.
You must have the right sized sockets, a flywheel puller, and a torque wrench to do it correctly, timing the sprockets are not a big deal.

SO, what do I say?? change the thing, you dont want to have one break ten miles from the ramp with the wind in the wrong direction, its getting dark, and you are out of beverages lol.
Sure, someone is going to chime in and say, a new one can break too!! yeah, they can, from improper installation.

Nate !! ya turd! how have you been?? you’ve been awol son!!
Congrats on the new son!!!

Buckybadger,, the best way I can explain what the air compressor does on an opti is this:
It creates high air pressure that blows fuel droplets to bits, imagine one drop of fuel becoming a hundred tinier drops of fuel, what has that accomplished??
You have increased the burnable surface area of the fuel and when you mix more droplets of fuel with air you get a much bigger bang for the buck, this is how and why optis are so dang efficient, you are burning more of the air/fuel charge.

How is this done?? the air compressor supplies air pressure to the fuel rail, and its regulator is what determines fuel pressure, on that era of opti, the air pressure regulator opens at around 95 PSI, that air pressure in a sense pushes on the fuel pressure regulator causing its pressure to rise on average 10 more pounds higher than the air pressure, IE.
95 Lbs air psi equals 110 PSI fuel pressure, the fuel pressure has to be higher than the air, always.
The fuel is blasted into the air injector as they set on top of each other in the fuel rail, fuel goes into a fuel injector and it shoots the fuel into the air injector which blasts it to bits directly into the cylinder above the piston.

I read where your opti is of same era of Johns, and if it has never been opened up, its due, I would remove the belt, the pulley, and the bolts holding the upper main cover on and look at the connecting rod journal on the crank, back then this was a big problem, the journal would start fretting shedding shards of metal into the cylinder wall, in turn, the would start scoring the cylinder and metal debris would start going into the fuel rail as that air is not filtered on the pressure side.
Once metal got into the air injectors it was a matter of time before an air injector failed and the motor would start feeding on itself.

Not trying to scare you, but if you want that baby to live have it checked and if I am right, it will be due for replacement, air injectors are almost 700 bucks each, and if you do have the exact same compressor as Johns, that baby is 1800 new!!
John lucked out because my Merc vendor had one off of a motor that only had 123 hours on it.

IF I can be of further help, PM me and I will forward my cell number to you.
Long live the OPTI’s!!!

I think I have two hundred left!!!

Firstly, my thoughts are with Jon Jordan tonight, for those reading this, please keep him and his family in your prayers.

I am always humbled when someone takes the time to write up something like this, especially when the way I look at it is this, I did what I was paid to do and I did it to the best of my given abilities.
Thank you John, it is deeply appreciated and it was my pleasure working for you.

Man what a mess, I had taken my boat to EPG’s house last year so that there wasnt any chance John was going to miss out on his trip to Kab incase his boat wasnt done at the body shop on time, it was, and the troubles began shortly there after.
As he said, I walked Al through a few things to give me an idea of what was going on, a few very simple tests gave me an idea but the soot fouled plugs was part of the answer, the thought was bad fuel or a fuel issue and soon enough it was at my shop.
Like John stated he left it with me all winter, I was able to check a few things the day he dropped it off, no codes,pressures were correct,injectors were so so but nothing jumped out, hhhmm, this wasnt going to be easy.

Here and there I was able to do some testing and run it on the dyno, several little issues showed up, air bubbles in the fuel line, long story short, the body shop I am guessing had stood the fuel tank on end when they had it out and the tygon syphon was curled up against the tank wall and hardened in its now dry environment, it was at fuel top level with a quarter of a tank!
I went after it and discovered some more things, impermeable liner was in pieces, a chunk of it was stuck in the suction side primer bulb valve, nah, it cant be this easy!!
And wtf??? the above deck fuel line was directly attached to the under deck line,,,, under the deck, this isnt right, the dang thru hull transition was never rigged right at the factory but they used that fitting to hook the two together!!, you bet, I drilled a hole in the splash well and did it right.
Check that fitting out, the corrosion was allowing fuel to drip into the bilge!! and,, it was sucking air when the pulse pump when it was pumping fuel, AHA!! new fuel line, primer bulb and gave her a blast on the dyno,,,,,,, and crap!! it would lay down on me.

When you lose pressures under load,and there is no fuel in the air side, it is a compressor problem, so I pulled the head off of the compressor to discover a blown head gasket, you can see the dark area on the cylinder where it was blown and I remembered Al saying it was spitting a bit of moisture out when I had him looking for fuel indicating a bad diaphragm, now moisture is normal with air compressors, many of you have drained tanks on humid days, same deal only in a smaller package.
Two new gaskets, and give her another pull on the dyno, great two times, laid down once, ran great, and laid down again, by now I am whizzed off, wth is going on???!!
So while still being tortured on the dyno I removed the compressor suction line and nodda, no suction, no pressure bleeding back, so while still very warm to the touch I ripped the head off so I could see if somehow heat was causing a problem with the reeds, nothing obvious I will get back to it as I had other work that was pressing.

Two nights of wrestling with what was going on in my no sleep nights I went in early one morning and stared at that reed plate and it hit me, the center reed was missing its reed stop, got it !!!! but how in the world was that causing the problem?
I took the air pressure regulator apart, tucked the pressure line in my cupped hand and with the other hand holding a blow gun, I blew 160 PSI shop air backwards through the fuel rail and I felt it hit my hand, that little piece had been bouncing around in the fuel rail occasionally blocking air off to the regulator!!!!!!!! SON OF A !!!!!!!
Now here is the stupid part, I looked back at my pictures of the reed plate when I had the compressor head off and there it was but I missed it, I saw the blown gasket and didnt catch the obvious, insert Yosemite Sam cursing here….

New compressor and belt in place, fire up the motor and pressures where they should be, once it had some heat in the motor I pinned the throttle at high load on the dyno, I wanted this biatch to work!!!!
The pressures never bobbled, Thank you God !!!!
And so after buttoning it up,, the voices in my head that scream away my mental health had an idea, lets see how long it takes for John to find several floats, let me tell you, I was disappointed, it didnt take a week!!

I did several other little things to give it my personal touch, including a silly note in my MEDS report….. you will have to ask John about that hahahah.

And yes, I took another leap of faith, a five month process of securing everything I needed to secure my Suzuki marine dealership, I might do a write up on that journey this weekend.

Thanks all for the kind words everyone, yours truly, Sheldon.

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So sorry to hear of this,Jon,if there is anything I can do shoot me a pm.
Prayers for the family.

So I have tried twice to reply to this,it appears I am not allowed to quote 57.

The mower was towed home 3 times because he ran out of gas

Twice he towed the sxs home because he couldnt start it and get it into gear

Now he has the moose head in the back of the sxs with fierce glowing red eyes and he has been sneaking thru the woods with it trying to get the finding bigfoot crew up there and hes been terrorizing the locals.
The rest I am sworn to secrecy

Well,hes either moving or got tired of it not having enough power to climb that steep incline behind the cabin.
Or,,,,the local cop told him he couldnt use it to drive to the bar anymore.

I think he goes by trutied custom jigs.
Wish i could afford 3 of everything he makes!!

2nd Trumars.

Good job Buster!!
If getting your uh,er,ahem,manhood bitten by a wolf causes excess swelling I would,,,,nevermind.

Anyway,several years ago my jack russell for whatever unexplained reason chased my giant scale RC airplane during takeoff and he went for the prop and the prop won big time.

I never saw him do it as the plane was much larger than him and I didnt see him on the far side,and,he had never chased it before,he would sit there and watch me fly it.

The scimitar prop made short work cutting his upper jaw completely in two about an inch behind his nose ,I had no clue a small dog could scream like that.
Long story short,4 stainless screws,4 inches of stainless wire,1 one missing upper fang,a V notch in the upper lip,and 800 bucks later he made a full recovery.
It was heartbreaking watching him heal up.

I was worried sick that his upper jaw would not heal back to the rest of his snout and I would be forced to put him down,thankfully he pulled thru and you would never know what the poor thing went thru.
From then on he would sit at my feet and watch the planes.

I pray that Buster makes a full recovery Don,dogs are the best buds ever.

Sparkles and her 10 month old 99 pound Dane,sheesh!!

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Geeze Don!!
Triple s method would be my tatic from here forward.
Prayers for Buster!!

When I had a Polaris 800 Xedge I used a creeper from Napa under the track and 2 dollies under thr skies,might have had 50 bucks invested but that was in 03.

Shoot, ya’all aint seen nuttin yet, ya otta see EPG’s cabin !!
And sadly, I cant take credit for it.

We have an animal shelter two miles from my house, it is constantly overloaded with cats, when they tell folks sorry, we are full, the owners just dump them off anywhere.
Too bad really as I am sure there are some good kitties in the mix, the rest, well, the coyotes are eating good.

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Tried posting a picture 3 times at 903 tonight.
Tried copy and paste,tried using choose file and submit.

I worked with a guy like that once, this dang near cost me my job but my boss was laughing so hard he couldnt fire me.
I sent the dude a box of kotex and a bottle of midol.