It's a beautiful Saturday morning on the Columbia River, high clouds, water has just a touch of ripple, and I'm cruising downstream at 47 mph or so with a plan to catch the winning bag of smallies. I'm not at full throttle, it's about 4700 RPMS. About ten minutes into my run the motor just dies. Not like it's chocking on gas, like the kill switch engaged.
I restart it, pause to consider my next step, decide to continue downstream because there is a ramp I can reach by trolling motor if need be. I jump up on plane and get another five minutes downriver when the motor dies same way. I check the kill switch attachment. It's solid.
This time, I can't get it to restart, so I drop the trolling motor and head to the bank. We fish the bank for three hours until my mechanic calls me back. (yes, on a Saturday).
He has me flip the little red lever on the motor to the up position and try and turn it over, cranks but doesn't catch. He has me flip it back down, nothing. He has me put the motor in neutral full throttle and crank it over, cranks but doesn't catch. He asks is the gauges went dead when the motor quit. I didn't notice. We make an appointment for that evening.
We run the trolling motor to the backup ramp – while my partner hitches a ride to get the trailer, I get the motor started with neutral full throttle (accidentally while it's trimmed out of the water) and immediately throttle down and lower it into the water. Motor sounds fine.
We trailer back to the upriver launch, and after relaunching, the motor starts up and runs fine the rest of the afternoon (Upstream only in case I had to limp back to the launch on trolling motor), ran good for a solid ten minutes of run time on two occasions, including some full throttle at 5470). I'm thinking that all is good except my less than great bag of smallies.
The next morning we head upstream with fingers crossed. Ten minutes in to the trip, the motor dies. I notice the gauges died. It restarts and I get another five minutes or so and stop where I planned to fish. We fish a long stretch of bank for a couple hours, fire up the big motor and make a quick three minute move – no problems. We make another quick move a short time later – no problems. We make a longer ten minute move – no problem. Our tournament director asks me to come tow him to the dock, which we do and takes about 45 minutes run time – no problems. Fishing was better too.
Motor code is J175GLEOM. It was rebuilt once by Monte's Racing about two years ago. I've got about 40 hours on the rebuild. It's pushing a 1995 Lund Pro V 1890.
So, any ideas on what causes the early morning / first run / intermittent issue? Morning temps were in the upper 50s and afternoon temps were in the upper 60s, so it's not a big temperature swing.
Thanks in advance,
Jon
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Originally Posted by Snag_Devil
The fact that you know "zilch" about outboards will make it pretty hard for the pros here (316jughead and ChampioNman) to help you troubleshoot it. Add in the fact that it is an intermittent problem, and that will make it twice as hard to troubleshoot. Even the best troubleshooters get frustrated with intermittent issues. They could probably give you an educated guess as to what might be the problem, but even then you'd have to tear into a motor that you know nothing about to change the part. 
