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Rod McInnis
 
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Default 115 mercury reed valves


"kozmo6969" wrote in message
om...

motor hard starting, dies when in water after take
off, problem restarting. any help here????? thanks koz


Can you elaborate on "dies when in water after take off" ??

If the motor dies when it is running at some significant speed then the
problem is not going to be the reeds.

The reeds are the valves that prevent the gas/air mixture in the crankcase
from going back out the carburetors. Ideally,. the reeds lay flat against
the reed plate and form a perfect seal. As the reeds get old, however, they
tend to pick up a bit of a bend and/or warp. This allows them to leak a
substantial amount.

This is usually a problem only at idle. At higher RPMs, the amount of leak
is less noticeable and the higher pressures tend to force the reed closed.
If the engine was running OK at some RPM, there is little that a reed could
do that would cause it to just die.

Hard starting, poor idle and hesitation when accelerating is likely to be
reeds.

On some engines changing the reeds is a trivial task. On other engines you
have to take so much stuff off that it becomes a nightmare. If you can get
to them without too much effort I would just change them to eliminate one
source of problems.

Rod