I've got a 1996 200HP Johnson Carbureted. It's been having intermittent problems getting on plane. If I squeeze the primer it'll pick up and plane. Once it planes it will have trouble getting over 4000 RPM (surges).

I hooked up a feeder tank with a clean fuel supply to the primer bulb and it still has the same problem.

Cleaned all the carbs.

I hooked a vacuum gauge up to the fuel inlet side of the VRO it reads about 2 inches of vacuum around 2000 RPM when I accelerate it will go to 0 when the surging starts, sometimes it will creep back to 2 inches and the surging will stop.

The VRO is 1 year old and has maybe 50 hours on it. The fuel lines between the primer and the VRO are all pretty tight. I did notice when the air box was off that the gas that was puddled in throat of the carbs looked cloudy (like it could be getting aerated). I can't find any air leaks. I took the VRO off to inspect it, so far so good. I plan on picking up a vacuum pump tomorrow in order to test it. The only other thing I haven't looked at is that thing that's T'd on the fuel inlet side of the VRO, it has a 1/4 inch fuel line going to it (not sure how to test it).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Vic