Mikeyman104

Well got it on tonight. Not the cleanest install but it's on there. Have 1 "in" port and 2 "outs" on the separator, with the other "in" blocked off. Tossed a couple check vales on the "outs" as well and clamped the heck out of everything. Put some gas in the separator and started up the main. Ran it for about 5 and did good. Next, fired up the kicker for the first and let her run for a bit too. All seems to be working. Couple of questions for you all though. Do you all trailer your kicker around with it tilted up or down? Think down is the way to go. Also, how you get more wires through the gasket things?

They look great!

Thanks all! Just got my kicker on the back of the boat and looking to put the F/W separator on sometime this week or weekend. Think there in the splash well will work based off of the input above so that'll be its home. Think I'll also put a couple check valves in the "out" gas lines to help prevent the motors stealing gas from each other too. Again, greatly appreciate the inputs and the responses, thanks all!

I was reading through some old posts, specifically the one below, and I liked the idea of adding a fuel water separator to my boat and then tie the kicker to the separator. My boat doesn't currently have a separator on it, so I'm wondering where the best location to install one is on my 196 starcraft superfisherman. I was thinking of putting it around here in the back where the fuel line comes out, but can it be exposed like this and are there other considerations I should be taking into account that I'm missing?

Thanks all! I hadn't thought of wiring the riggers to the cranking battery because I did that in my old boat and the riggers drained it. This was cause my kicker didn't have electric start or an alternator so while I was trolling and using the riggers, it was just draining my crank battery the whole 6 hours. I do need to buy a kicker for my new rig so i'll be looking to see if i can get a deal on one with an alternator. I'm not an electrical guy by any means, so i've never really wanted to dive into the battery switch and isolator world. Then again, in my old boat i only had 2 batteries and everything was just wired directly to where it needed to be. I got to read up more on both the switches and isolators to get a better understanding of them. thanks again all for the suggestions and input!

Thanks Hop, is the floor storage flat up there? how did you strap the battery down?

For the batteries you have in the bow storage, are they strapped down? Thinking they almost have to be Yeah, was thinking i'll have to do something like that. Thought the cranking battery should only be used specifically for the motor though?

This mild weather has got me thinking on how I can wire up my boat for trolling come spring time. I have a 2001 Starcraft 196 superfisherman that I'm looking to put some electric big jons on, but am not sure how I should go about with wiring and battery set up. Currently, there's 2 batteries in series under my consoles that run up to the bow to control the 24v trolling motor. Off of the battery under the driver side console, I have my Garmin fish finder wired directly to it. I was reading online that this will likely drain/kill my batteries quicker so thinking i'll have to address this too. Main motor is on a battery by itself so in total i have (3) 12v's currently on my boat. Ideally, I'd be looking at a single 24v lithium for my trolling motor and then break the other 12v electronics (big jons and garmin) out by themselves, but that's not in the budget. Was thinking of sticking another 12v up in the bow to run the garmin and big jons off of that, but no real good spot to put it up there and be running the wire a decent ways? Pic is the way it's kind of set up now and wondering if there's a better way i should be going about this. Input/suggestions appreciated. Thanks all!

Most recent update: took it to a shop and they replaced the water pump and thermostats. Pumps water good about 5-10 seconds after start up, but nice solid flow now. Much better compared to when I bought it. Best part was the guy told me it looked like someone replaced the impeller with a cheap one that is way more flexible than the OEM version. I told him, yeah I did that, and that's when it all went down hill . Think I'll pay for the OEM parts from now on just for that peace of mind. Thanks again to all for the comments and feedback.

Different things learned while trying to do this: 1. The speedometer tube is a pain to get back into it's little hole once you drop the lower unit 2. Make sure the shift shaft goes back into where it's suppose to. Launched the boat this morning and the lower unit was stuck in forward gear. That was quite a jolt at the dock and glad the ropes held. Shifter was in neutral so she started, but I dropped the lower unit while in forward and then missed it going back in, so gears were in forward, but shifter in neutral. 3. I shouldn't quit my day job to be a mechanic. Now I got a constant beep above 2500ish RPM and she still takes quite a while to start spitting water, so probably going to just take it to a dealer. Thinking it has something to do with the cooling system cause I've botched this project haha. I was always under the same impressions as some of previous comments in that as soon as it starts it should have water coming out. It still doesn't for me, so might be poppet or thermostat? Getting to the poppet looks like a pain, but might give the thermostats a quick look before I take it in. Thanks all for the inputs and help on this.

Got the new water pump kit in. Gaskets were in the correct order this time and had a friend help me with getting the lower unit back on. I was say, getting the speedometer tube back in its hole is an experience but way easier with 2 people. Got the muffs on and fire her up. No water coming out the pee hole for about a min but then it slowly starts to come out. Give her a bit of gas and good stream comes out. Let off the gas and the stream slows down as well, but keeps flowing. Seems to me that this is just normal for her I guess? Everyone/everything pees differently I suppose

I still consider myself very green when it comes to trolling, but I've has pretty good success near the bottom in 70-90 FOW pulling cowbells and spin n glos for lakers. This is always a bit of an adventure as the lake has some pretty significant depth changes that can sneak up on you, so make sure to adjust the riggers as needed and not get snagged. Down speed around 1.7-2.0 mph and if you don't have a probe, usually was around 2.3-ish on the gps speed.

When I took it out the boat out for a ride (ran a couple miles at about 4000 RPM), I didn't get any alarms or beeps, so hoping it was ok and not running hot. Once she got running, the flow improved. Maybe it's normal for these motors? Either way figured it'd be good to replace the impeller (till i messed it up ) Also had to google what a poppet valve is, where it's at, and what it does. Looks like a pain to get to.

Thought about this as well. Once that gasket got chewed up, I was worried about it getting lodged up in the thermostat or elsewhere in the system. I flushed it afterward it got chewed up, but thinking about replacing the thermostats just in case.

Thanks all! Cleaned out the pee hole with some weedeater string. That worked great so thank you for the recommendation. Unfortunately it still wasn't spitting but I at least knew that was clean. Took the lower unit back off and gasket was all torn up again. Watched some more YouTube and looks like I had the gasket order on wrong, so user error. Got another kit on order. Tried to flush everything out best I could. Also turns out this new motor has its own flush port, so ran some water in there for a bit too. Hopefully I'll put it together correctly next time 😆 (instructions are just someone else's opinion)

I recently picked up a new to me boat, a 2001 Starcraft 196 Superfisherman with a 2004 150 Mercury Optimax on it. When the guy was showing me the boat, he hooked up some muffs and I noticed how it took a while for it to start peeing but eventually it started to flow ok. Fast forward to my first outing with the boat and pretty much same thing was going on. Starts with a trickle but then gets going ok. I chalked it up to needing a new water pump, so I tossed a new one on tonight and then put the muffs on it. Nothing comes out. Makes me super nervous running it without any water coming out of the tell tale so I shut her off and pulled the lower unit back off. Guessing I did something wrong with the install cause one of the gaskets got chewed up so I tossed the old one back on. Hooked the muffs up again but she still wasn't spitting. Maybe a piece of gasket clogged everything up? I pulled the tell tale tube off and blew through it and it seemed fine. Anyway to clean out the system?

Update on the Ol girl: Took her to a shop and she had bad compression on the middle cylinder. 120/80/110 PSI on the cylinders from top to bottom. Could have done a rebuild or a motor swap, but figured it might just be time to move on from the ol leaky girl as I think the fixes/repairs were going to cost more than what it is was worth. Posted and sold on facebook so now in the market for a new to me boat.

Thanks all! My biggest worry right now is the low compression as I did use the screw in type compression tester and it was a brand new one right from the box so hopefully that isn't the issue. All plugs were pulled during the test but I can turn the flywheel with my hand so it's not overly difficult to turn. The starter struggles with it though but might be the battery? I did try 2 batteries to start it, but only 1 was a starting battery so might be the issue with the hard cranking. I had the starting battery on a charger for the last 2 days so I'll give this a quick look to see if she at least turns better. If she does, I'll give her another compression test and hope they are around 90psi. If so, then I'll replace all the coils. I suppose worse case could be that the original stalling was tied to the fuel/oil pump on this thing and now the low compression is because they weren't getting oil and fried themselves? I obviously hope not, but does it kind of makes sense? Apologize for all the "if" "and" and "buts" about my testing and diagnosis here. First time diving into this motor so have been watching a lot of youtube and greatly appreciate all the insight above! Wife has been saying it might be time to take it somewhere for service. I'm not at that point yet, but am starting to lean that way

Thanks all for the input! Much appreciated! On Friday I ended up replacing the top cylinder ignition coil and power pack (found the power pack on Amazon warehouse so was a pretty good deal so figured why not replace it?). Run the motor in the driveway with the muffs on and seemed to run good. Took it out on Seneca today launching from Sampson. Made it about halfway across the lake and she just died. Was cruising at about 28mph and right down she went. No bang, or any odd noise like something breaking, but was able to get it going again after a bit and headed back toward Sampson only for her to die again. Couldn't get her running again and she was starting to turn over harder. Got back to the launch with the kicker and trolling motor so no real harm. Got it home and pulled all plugs and didn't see anything noticeable. Tested compression on all cylinders and was at about 50psi for all 3 so something bad happened. She toast?

Very impressive collection of plaques and trophies above! Well done all! Here's to hoping that someone on here wins some more shiny hardware and cash this weekend! Meanwhile, only cool thing I've gotten at this derby is an anchor we caught with a dipsy last year

Well, took apart the top carb to clean it best I could. Wasn't as bad as I was expecting getting it off so I'm sure I probably did something sketchy. Also, ones off it was nerve racking getting the small screw behind the drain plug out cause didn't have the best screw driver for it. Only thing I noticed was this one gasket was pretty beat so put a new one on along with some other parts from a rebuild kit (ps. It's worrying how many extra pieces are included in those kits😆). Thanks again to all for the input on this! I also ordered a fuel pump rebuild kit, but that thing looked like a pain to get out. Might tackle that on a different night.

Thanks all! Greatly appreciate the input! It is a VRO unit and based on the oil in the top cylinder I was assuming it was working OK? (Pic of plug and head from last night) New spark plugs so hoping that's not the issue. I actually ordered NGK plugs originally and that's when I first started noticing the issue and then I went back to OEM and no change. It does tend to run better when first starting in the morning. As day goes on usually becomes worse, which makes docking a bit of an adventure. Hadn't thought of the fuel pump, and really didn't want to do a carb rebuild but might end up going thay way. I'll check out the CDI electrical tests as well. Thanks all!