Well, I know its not a snowmobile but thought I would post here since there are so many knowledgeable people on here. I have a 1985 Suzuki DT55 outboard that I just got my hands on and hope to get it going for this summer. Right now we have everything connected and the motor starts fine and idles fine but only for about 20 seconds. It then starts missing and quits. It will start up again almost immediately but dies again after 20 seconds or so. We figured it was fuel related but checked everything, fuel pump, filter tank lines and its all fine. Carbs are clean and look great. Any ideas on this?? Hoping its not electical. When it starts to quite it smokes a lot also.
bluemonster1
LIFE MEMBER ONLY ONCE!!!
sounds like a choking issue.
That what we thought and checked the choke. It seems to work fine and is staying off. Its looking more like an electrical as it happens very consistantly at 20 seconds. I hate electrical problems!! This motor is an 85' and suprisingly has a throttle position sensor, a low oil sensor that retards the timing and a cooling water sensor that retards timing when overheating. I'm thinking it may be getting a faulty reading or something. Hard to find much on the web about older motors like this.
musselman
Active member
Can you get it to rev up at all? We had one of these come into the shop with a similar problem. It stayed there almost the whole summer while we tried swapping out different sensors and such. For the longest time we thought it was the oil sensor, however I forget what the solution was. I think it sounds like an electrical problem though with one of those sensors.
Yeah, it will rev up but also dies down and stalls after some time. One thing I didn't do was check to see if it dies faster when the throttle is opened then when at idle. If so this could indicate a fuel problem. I wouldn't think the TPS sensor would have enough control to actually make the engine quit and I recently found that the motor in this year didn't have the oil flow sensor so that leaves the cooling water sensor which is missing. What I don't know is if the sensor is unplugged or gone would that give a fault or not. Don't know if the switch is normally open or closed.
bluemonster1
LIFE MEMBER ONLY ONCE!!!
yes ,electrical problems can be a bit*h to solve.And time consuming also.
Sounds to me like it is being starved of fuel,,, try a different hose & make sure tank is getting air.....
Whammy said:
Yeah, that's what I was hoping. Tried different hose, tank and even bypassed the fuel pump and went gravity feed. Still did it. Might have to dig into the carbs again.
Well, problem solved. Ended up being the Throttle Position Sensor. Disconnected it and everything works great. Starts better and stays running. For whatever reason the timing was maybe too advanced? Now it will likely work like crap at higher rpms. Taking her to the lake this weekend to see how it works. Thanks for all the tips.