Mercury Outboard Saga - part 27

This morning Sue finally got through to the outboard mechanic.  It turns out he was NOT a Mercury mechanic but he said he would take a look at it after he finished another job around noon.  We rowed ashore around 1:00 to be ready for him.  We went to the store for groceries while waiting, and then gave him a call around 2:00  - no answer!  There is an auto repair garage right across from the grocery store so I thought, what the heck - if they didn't work on outboards they might at least have an idea of what I should look for.  They didn't work on outboards but said the guy right next door did.

We had noticed the place next door.  The yard was covered with old boat hulls - to the point of hiding the building there, and no sign to indicate any sort of business.  When I walked up Matthew was sitting under a tree talking with a friend.  They were surrounded by outboards in varying degrees of dis-assembly, old parts, broken parts, wheelless jacked up vehicles, and what to an untrained eye looked like junk.  Matthew said I could bring our outboard by and he would take a look.  Sue was still waiting to hear from the first mechanic so we carried our outboard across the street.  We eventually got it rigged up in a tank of water.  It wouldn't start so we pulled the carb off  (I'm actually pretty good at carb removals by now).  Matt found one dirty jet that I apparently missed when I cleaned the carb last week.  I was happy that he found it but a little disappointed with myself for missing it.  Even more so when it fired right up after we put it all back together.  I didn't feel quite so bad when the motot died and wouldn't restart.

Without going into all the gory details,  Matt eventually determined that the fuel pump was bad - it was actually allowing too much fuel past the carb.  Matt said he was going to check "the parts department".  Did I mention that Matthew isn't a Mercury dealer or mechanic?  His "parts department" was scattered all over the ground.  We eventually found most of a Nissan 5 horse outboard.  Under the cover it is identical to the Mercury -as is the Tohatsu.  I pulled the carb/fuel pump off the Nissan and put it on our carb.  We got our outboard running with the Nissan donor parts - so well (so far, knock on wood) that Sue could start it in the test tank.  I'll be curious to see how long it continues to run.

The really interesting thing about all this, and why I even mention it, Matthew was prepared to loan us his outboard so we could finish our trip if he couldn't get our motor running.  "You can bring it back next year." he said.  Sort of an interesting counter point to our Batelco experiences.  And, by the way, we're still waiting to hear from the first mechanic.  Why do I think there will be more Mercury episodes?