And why you should do it yourself
Magayon II’s outboard motor finally gave up. It was second hand and was never very reliable and often needed a lot of work to get it started. I took the carburetor apart once to clean it and figured out that one of the two holders of the float was broken off the carb chamber. The previous owner also told me that he had it once converted from short shaft to long shaft. Somehow we got it running, often with the help of local mechanics. But after six years using it occasionally, it finally gave up after we had moved the boat to Zambales. I have plans to convert Magayon to an electric drive, and have all the components already, but for longer distances we still need a gasoline motor. So after thinking about options for a while, I decided to take it apart and repair it.
Ignition and Carburateur
During a visit to Sundowners Villas I checked the the ignition. There was a very weak spark and the spark plugs were all oiled up and dirty. Lazada had a 10 pieces box of spark plugs and also spark plug caps and cables at good price. During the next visit I replaced the spark plugs, got some fuel and tried to start the engine after checking that there was a spark (ignition system eliminated as potential source of trouble). But first I had to remove the starter and then get the pistons moving again by twisting the flywheel forcedly because they got stuck. No idea how the motor looks inside, probably not too good. After flooding the carb and trying all different combinations for throttle and coke the motor finally started at the accelerator set at full throttle. It would only run shortly at high revs and die immediately when throttle was reduced. So obviously carb problems.
Nest step was to take the carb off and clean it. One of the two hoses that go to the motor had a hole, so that could have contributed to the problem (it actually didn’t, which a quick test showed after shortening the hose. The carb was extremely dirty, there was water and a lot of dirt in it. Quite clear why it would not run smoothly. And the breakage inside, which I had tried to fix with an epoxy bond, was still there. so obviously the epoxy was not strong enough.
My family tried to buy spare gaskets and fuel hoses in Iba, but nothing was available. My daughter said sarcastically “This is Iba”. So for the testing of the motor I repaired the float holder with Steel Epoxy again, assembled the carb and used silicone from Magayon II stocks to seal the worn out floating chamber gasket and a disk cut from a wine bottle cork with my Swiss army knife as a gasket for the screw at the bottom of the floating chamber. After mounting the cleaned carb I started the engine, and it ran, after a few minutes also at idle speed. It made a lot of noise, so maybe the pistons are quite worn, we sometimes had to run it without much cooling water, for example when we sailed to Pandan Island.
When testing the motor, initially there was cooling water coming out of it, but that stopped once the motor got hot and only steam came out of the pilot hole. The old problem. Not good enough for moving the boat from Zambales to Subic.
More serious work needed
A decision was made to take the motor to Los Banos because there I have a better workshop, and I would have to order and wait for some spare parts anyway. I wrote an inquiry for parts to ASL Marine Center Corporation, which is the official Yamaha dealer in the Philippines. I did not have much hope since in the past I had bad experiences with ASL. So I looked up the essential parts on Lazada and Amazon and did find the carb repair kit, water pump repair kit in an OEM spare part supply shop in the Netherlands and the oil seals on Amazon. However, ASL came back to me with a quotation two days later, some things seem to change for the better.
Rebuilding the bottom
When draining the gearbox oil, half of what came out was water. Not good. So a full restoration it was then. I took it apart. The impeller was still OK but the cooling water channels in the bottom were pretty much clogged with goo / salt residues. That partly explained the water shortages. Another order placed at ASL and I got all parts needed for a re-built. And surprise gain, all except for one screw were on stock. The order got shipped from Manila and arrived within 3 days.