On Wed, 21 Mar 07, sherwindu wrote:
Actually, repairing a blocked carb on the Yamaha is tiresome, but not that
difficult.
After dissassembly,

........ (the tiresome part.... as well as reassembly)

just run a very fine wire through the jets to open them up.

That's the "not that difficult" part.

A more pro-active way would be to buy only premium gasoline. Make sure your
fuel system is clean, hoses, tanks, etc. Use a stabelizer like Sea Foam or
Stabil in the gas tank. Put a fine filter (about 10 micron) in line with your fuel
delivery system.

Honda has a screw on the side of the carburetor that, with a half
turn, allows the bowl to drain (thru a tube, out, next to the pee
hole... pretty handy :-). My shop sevice manager says that's the most
important thing I can do to prevent gum up. "Running" the carb dry
won't empty it completely. He mentioned everything else on your list
as well.
I asked if I could have it back in a few days. He shook his head and
said "Maybe a few weeks". Frankly, my money's on "Months", we'll see.
Those guys *really* could use some competition around here. If I have
some spare time next weekend, I may pick it up and fix it myself (but
not at the expense of my warranty... need to check on that).

Now that I hear that Honda's have the
same problem, I regret even less my decision to go with Yamaha.

Next time, you might consider Mercury as well. They're building their
own powerheads this year (they no longer use Yamaha). And they have
two "sailboat" friendly 9.9's (large dia props, low gear ratio, 25"
shafts) which seem to be a few pounds lighter than Yamaha or Honda or
anybody else I can see. I'm not sure what the difference is between
those two models (Bigfoot & Prokicker) except Prokick offers power
trim. So Bigfoot is lighter (96lbs).

Rick