2000 Evinrude Ficht 150 Hard Starting When Cold

[Danrude]

I went through a problem with those symptoms on my old 200 Ficht, turned out to be a low flowing injector. I sent all of them to DFI technologies to have them cleaned and checked and they confirmed that one was low flowing. One other symptom I had was that I could not check the timing while hooked up to the software because it would shut off when you would start the process. Everything worked correctly when I reinstalled them. A trained tech should be able to determine if one is bad by minipulating the fuel flow with the software.

[HydraBlade]

Thanks Dan! Hoping to get to work on it again in the next week. I'm hoping it's not the injectors, the funds aren't there right now to have all of them checked.

[HydraBlade]

Thought I would follow up on my issue. I had the opportunity about a month ago to do a decarb by spraying seafoam down the intakes while idling on the lake. It's like I have a different motor now. Starts and idles good, doesn't die when shifting out of gear, etc. It was amazing the amount of smoke that was produced, and I have done several decarbs on car motors before. I am going to do another decarb on it, change the plugs and call it good.

I appreciate everyone's help!

[jc2bg]

Thought I would follow up on my issue. I had the opportunity about a month ago to do a decarb by spraying seafoam down the intakes while idling on the lake. It's like I have a different motor now. Starts and idles good, doesn't die when shifting out of gear, etc. It was amazing the amount of smoke that was produced, and I have done several decarbs on car motors before. I am going to do another decarb on it, change the plugs and call it good.

I appreciate everyone's help!

Having run Evinrudes on bass boats for over 30 years now, plus working in an Evinrude shop for 15 years (80s and 90s), I am frequently amazed to come back to this simple truth: what we often think are cold-starting problems are actually rough-running problems brought on by carbon deposits and/or dirty plugs. The thing is, even one of these engines with significant carbon buildup can and will run nicely when it's warmed up. There's a lot of opportunity there [we might call it "slack"] to assume that the fault is related to fuel delivery, starter drag, battery power, or such.

Even with my experience driving Evinrude V6s, I have been fooled as above more than once. Most recently, my 2011 200 H.O. was not starting easily in the first cold spring that I operated it. Come to find out, my running XD50 in it for a dozen or so trips, during which time I also did a ton of idling and very little running on plane, had carboned the heck out of the motor. Simply switching to XD100 and doing a thorough de-carboning completely cured my cold starting issues. In the two years since, the 200 E-Tec cranks less than a second when starting in the morning, even if the air temp is below 30 degrees, and it's sputtered and died maybe twice in the last 100 trips, which is remarkable. 1000% better starting now that I'm keeping the carbon out of the engine.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying, because your engine and mine aren't the same era or technology, but the issues and fix are eerily similar, so there certainly could be a pattern there.

JC

[Dmnazdaq]

Hydra- I am having similar problems on my cold, hard starting 200HP Ficht Motor. Was curious how you sprayed SeaFoam treatment into your injectors, while idling? Would like to try this if you could describe the location of the spray, to a novice mechanic? Thanks

[HydraBlade]

I bought the Seafoam spray cans at Walmart. Just take the air silencer off while making sure to leave the air temperature sensor plugged into the harness. While idling in gear, start spraying the Seafoam into each throttle body. Obviously have someone with you that can drive the boat while you spray. Just be sure to hold the straw on the can to make sure it doesn't come off and go into the engine. After spraying all of the throttle bodies good, shut down the engine and fish for 20 or thirty minutes. Fire it back up while being prepared to shut it back down in case the motor revs too high from all of the cleaner in it. Once it idles normally, take it for a run.

This helped my engine for a while, but it is now back to starting hard. May need to do another cleaning on it or else my injectors are getting worn.

Hope this helps!

[ChampioNman]

When was the last time you replaced and indexed the plugs.

[HydraBlade]

When was the last time you replaced and indexed the plugs.

Champ, I put new plugs in and indexed them last spring. Probably have 10 hours on them, didn't use the boat much last year. I plan to check them soon.