It “only” took us a bit over a year to reach today’s milestone, but it is here, and the engine run test went, well, pretty well, given that the engine sat for so long post-rebuild.
As you see in the clip, it ran beautifully and strongly, albeit with some stumbling, for about half an hour.
Then it began behaving like it was starving for gas, and finally was clearly in some distress. The carb was out prime suspect, so we pulled and disassembled it, only to find that, over the last year plus sitting in the shop, where temps and humidity rise and fall daily. The combination of the condensation and the carb sitting gunked it up, simply put. The jets were clogged and the float was sticking. (I guess I needn’t share our faux pas with the community, but am doing so to share the education we experienced today.)
Joe and RJ broke it down completely, cleaned it thoroughly to the point that it and all its components are now squeezy clean.
We bolted it back on, hooked all the linkages and choke up, and hit the key. That’s all and a bit of tuning was what she wanted.
She now roars to life, idles smoothly and accelerates without stumbling. Now she is running like a Swiss watch for sure!
We’ll have her on the water tomorrow, which will be her first time in well over 20 years.
Yes, we will be shooting video for her sea trial.