No, not pumping bulb, hitting the choke/primer. Like Alumacraft said, pumping the bulb only tells you about the fuel pump/fuel supply. I’m assuming you push your key in to prime/choke? Priming sends extra fuel to your intake manifold(behind the carbs). So if you have a dirty carb not supplying enough fuel(this is what causes the bogging or erratic running behavior), priming will give the motor the fuel it needs to take off and run. The motor should “catch fire” when you hit the choke, and it might even take off to full speed once it gets on the main jet. If it does, then you know you have dirty idle circuits and or intermediate jets.

Wow, cant believe i didn't think of that because that makes perfect sense. Restricting air flow to a carb that has fuel restrictions will balance out the air fuel mixture instead of being heavy on air with too little fuel. Thanks! Gonna look it over this weekend as long as the weather cooperates and quits raining.

oh i see what you mean and i didnt even think about that and yes i choke the motor when starting by pressing key in. I haven't tried holding it in while running to assess that yet but will! Thanks!

Don’t just hold the choke in while trying this or you will just bog the motor down because of too much fuel. You want to give it short, quick primes, basically like you are trying to squirt small amounts of fuel in it. Do this until the motor responds to it. It will either run better or get worse.

Ok im back lol. Sorry it took me so long. Life and weather got in my way the last few weekends. Following some peoples advice I pulled the carbs back off to clean again and to try and be more thorough with and I peeked at the reed valves/pedals. Pedals look good, cleaned carb again and just gave her a try. Starts just fine like before but idle seemed much lower than last time. Sounded very similar to how fast it should be running at while in neutral. I say it sounds like its right because my tach is still jumping around like it was and because I worked with the idle and throttle adjustments and if I turn off any more fuel to each carb it starts to run rough. When I say jumping around I mean from less than 1000 to 3500. Stopping sometimes at 2000 for a sec before bouncing back up or dropping down, back and forth. So even adding a little throttle while on trailer sounds good and doesn't cut out or hesitate. All throttle plates are synced and moving like the should. Hard to say how it will run until I hit the lake with it. But with the motor idling consistently with no hits and misses with no surging like it was before, can we say this is an electrical problem? I have read some already on the interwebs about stators or triggers causing these symptoms.

If your tach is jumping around but the motor is at a constant rpm I would definitely say electrical issues

Thanks for giving an update CWCW. You won’t know anything until you put it on the lake and get a load on it. But like my first post said, it sounds electrical. Report back on what it does at the lake. And should you still have problems, remember to try the priming/choking to rule out the fuel system. Stator is a higher percentage failure, would look there first. Triggers are fairly low percentage. Tach comes from the rectifier/regulator, so need to give it a check.

Ok update.... was gonna run and get trailer registration done so I could take to lake and test out. I got to fooling around with looking over the boat again and after reading some stuff online about the rear connections to tachometers getting loose and causing weird readings on the tach I decided to look and all tach wires are good......also read about weird readings on fish finder Voltage while motor running would be signs of stator or voltage regulator issues. Tried to turn on fishfinder and it acts like it has no power, wont turn on. Then I try aerator, navigational lights and bilge pump switches and none of those accessories are getting power to my surprise. I have power to my throttle power trim and tilt and power to trim and tilt button on outboard but no power to any of the other accessories. I have power to the starter. I take out voltage meter to measure voltage and find a resting voltage of 12.3V which is low and it shouldn't be because it had plenty of time to recharge during the last running of the motor and the battery is brand new. Low voltage on battery caused me to look at stator. Found an online Mercury Manual from 1998 for a 40,50,55,60 hp two stroke outboards (mine is a 2008) but the diagrams and everything look exactly the same. Find in the electrical section where it says trouble shooting and I find healthy resistance numbers for the stator. Says Green/White wire to White/Green wire should have a reading from 660-710 Ohms. The multi meter reads 0 ohms and when I switch the red and black multimeter leads to the same two wires I still get 0 ohms. Can I safely say I have a bad stator? Stator has four wires total coming out of it, the other two are yellow and the manual didn't say anything about checking the resistance of those wires so I didn't check them.


I know that this doesn't explain the accessories not working which is a problem I need to clear too but it could be the reason my new battery reads 12.3v and my tach is going crazy.

If you are checking everything correctly, then that stator is certainly bad. Yellow wires are your charge coil, it should have perfect continuity, any resistance there would be bad.

Well I had a few beers the other night when I was using the multimeter and didn't calibrate the ohms dial on the side while touching the black and red leads before I used it. I just hooked the multimeter back up after calibrating it and I got a number of 800 ohms which is over the range that I found online that says 660-710 ohms. Also, after reading PlanoPaul's post above I checked the yellow wires to see if they had any resistance. The scale was at 10,000 ohms one way but when I switched the wires and leads I got no response, not reading 0 ohms, the needle just didn't move. What does that mean? Still pointing bad stator?

check it out for you next week

I did not see this suggestion above. While you are working on stuff, now would be a great time to replace the fuel lines from the tank to the motor. If you have been using ethanol blend fuel, the lines are most likely degraded and possibly flaking on the inside. This can cause fuel delivery issues. I learned the hard way with my 2008 Merc.

Edit: And if my reading comprehension was up to par, I would have noted the OP said he replaced lines in the first post. Carry on...

and while you have the carbs off just go ahead and throw some new needles and seats in them. Over the almost 30 years that I had my Black Max I probably replaced the needles and seats 4 or 5 times. I know some people like to run the fuel out of a carbed motor but I don't. Before you take the carbs off again get a squirt bottle and mix gas and oil in the proper ratio. Pull the air box cover and while the motor is running on a house squirt the mix in the carb intake. Does the engine bog or rev up? If it revs then that is the problem carb. Running a 2 cycle on a lean condition is no bueno. If you spray the mix in to all the carbs and they all bog then probably not a fuel issue. Make sure you replace all the fuel lines with ones that will handle ethanol. The OEMs on my Ranger started flaking on the inside. We found the flakes in the jets.