Re: Old 2 stroke vs new outboards (2&4) stroke

[David Stanton]

quote twostroke:

My poor old pontoon boat that my wife and I use on almost a daily basis when the water isn’t ‘hard’ has a 30 yr old OMC twin that just plain runs.
Jim

My Dad bought 1987 30 Evinrude new back then when he bought his pontoon which I now have. Like your similar or same motor – yes – it always ran….but….like a lot of those era OMCs in that HP range, it had a fairly wide throttle range where it did not run smooth as it was in transition from the low to hi speed carb jets. The speed we want to idle around the lake is in the middle of that rough running range. I could only alter that slightly by adjusting the low speed carb needle, and then it didn’t idle well at slower speeds. This rough running and "4-cycling" of the 2-stroke engine made it noisier and it was marginally Ok until my wife took a ride on a neighbor’s pontoon with a 4-stroke. I didn’t hear the end of it until 2004 when I bought a new 25 Yamaha 4-stroke for it. I’ve noticed on several similar motors, this rough-running throttle range is (in my opinion) unacceptably wide.
Dave