1998 Evinrude Vindicator 200 - stumbed while on plane but restarted and ran???

[e30racer]

I've owned the boat about 3 months now and put approx 20hrs on the motor and it had ran great so far. Yesterday while running down the lake on plane at about 4400 rpm the motor brifedly bogged a couple of times a few seconds apart and then cleared up and started running fine and then about 30 seconds later it bogged again and completely died on me. I immediately restarted it and it ran at a very high idle for about 5 seconds and then settled down and idled normally. I then put the boat back on plane with full power from the engine and headed towards the boat ramp. It ran on plane fine for about another two minutes as I headed toward the ramp but when the ramp was in sight it stumbled again but did not die. I checked the fuel bulb at this time and it was good and firm. I did not have time to do a lot of troubleshooting last evening but the fuel filter under the cowl "looked" clean. I'm going to dump out the fuel water seperator filter this evening and check that (Note - I have only ran fresh ethanol free gas in the boat since I purchased it).

I was hoping some of the omc experts on this board could offer me some additional troubleshooting advise?

thanks,
Steven<br /><br />
Modified by e30racer at 11:54 AM 3/19/2012


Modified by e30racer at 11:54 AM 3/19/2012

[ChampioNman]

Just a guess but it sounds like the power pack is going out.

[e30racer]

Decided to take a gamble and go ahead and replace the power pack. I've got a Johnson/Evinrude genuine replacement on the way.

thanks,
Steven

[e30racer]

Reading about power packs on this board it sounds like there maybe some type of optical eye I should replace also. Does my engine have one of these optical eyes?
If so, does anyone know the part number for that part?

Medel# E200STLECE

thanks,
Steven

[ChampioNman]

Nope your engine uses a timer base to send the spark signal to the coils. The Optical eye or EET is used on the 60* motors.

[e30racer]

Thanks for the info C-Man! I'll let you know if the power pack fixes my issue.

Steven

[e30racer]

Installed the replacement power pack tonight and the boat started right up and ran in the garage. The real test will be this weekend at the lake.

Installation was very straightforward and easy... all wires were color coded on both ends so from my perspective it would be really hard to mess up.

When I started the replacement job, I was surprised to find that there was a CDI power pack installed the engine so I know that the power pack was not original to my engine. It had been on there long enough that the coil wire boots were starting to crack a little.

thanks,
Steven