On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:42:39 +0200, "Mees de Roo"
d wrote:

If you have an engine with a problem rule 1 is not to touch/modify anything
that does not have a problem. You have a 3-cylinder running on 2 cylinders; so
don't touch anything that's specific to the 2 cylinders that are working.
Meddling with the carbs of these 2 cylinders was a bad idea. Violating this
rule could easily leave you with umpteen intermixed selfinflicted problems,
that cannot be solved by anyone but a high-paid expert.
If you have a 3-cylinder running on 2 cylinders do not touch/modify anything
these 3 cylinders have in common; if 2 cylinders run with the current
ignition-timing and carburettor settings 3 cylinders should do the same
(fine-tuning comes later when all 3 are running roughly the same).
Be carefull when this is an old engine running on 2-stroke mixed gasoline;
when a cylinder gets no fuel it gets no oil. Crank-bearings and
cylinder/piston/pistonrings might already have been damaged; check this
cylinder for compression as a quick and dirty way to estimate engine damage.
When it is a modern engine with oil-injection, the third cylinder might be
soaked in oil; so get a new sparkplug, use it outside the combustionchamber to
check that there is a solid spark, and get the old sparkplug out.
If the old sparkplug is soaked in oil, try to smell if there is a strong
gasoline smell with it. If not, your repair of the carburetter failed; repeat
the repair and make sure it fills this time and check wether the jets are not
clogged up in the same way and with the same residue as the rest of the
carburettor was.
If the 3rd cylinder gets oil AND gasoline the cumulated oil from your earlier
attempts to start it without fuel probably got the sparkplug so dirty that
replacing it with a new one is the only quick solution.
When this fails check compression too. Failure to prepare the engine for the
winter stop might result in "hung" piston rings; you can try a strong
commercial engine cleaner (for internal cleaning!) here, to avoid a
cylinderhead pulling with risks for further damage (broken pistonrings or
worse).
After that get it to an outboard expert.

Mees de Roo


Mees, in what part of the Netherlands do you live?