There are many things that you can do to help prolong the life of your engine, and reduce the risks of break downs. Read below for some top tips.

Fuel:

Fuel is one of the three fundamentals that your engine needs to run. It is important that you give the engine the best chance possible by taking care of that fuel and choosing the right fuel for your engine. Whenever you are not using your engine, it is a good idea to keep the fuel tank breather valve closed, this will help stop moisture getting into the fuel tank. If you have a built in fuel tank if you keep the tank full as much as possible, there is less room for moisture from condensation to build up in the engine, and any bits of contaminated fuel at the bottom of the tank should stay there and not get sucked up into the engine.

Petrol outboards – E5 or E10?

In your petrol outboard, when deciding if you should put E5 or E10 in your fuel tank, the first step is to have a look in your owners manual, or contact the manufacturer and find out what fuel you an use. Some engines cannot be used with E10, as E10 has a higher Ethanol content. As Ethanol attracts more moisture, this can cause problems with your engine. If you are using E10 in your outboard, if you don’t have an onboard fuel water separator, it might be a good idea to get one fitted to reduce the amount of moisture making it from your fuel tank to the engine. In addition to the moisture in the fuel, petrol now doesn’t have the same lead in the fuel which worked as a stabiliser, slowing down the “shelf life” of the fuel therefore it is important to put stabiliser in your fuel tank if you are not going to be using the fuel for a while.

Why Drain the fuel from your 4 stroke outboard?

When the fuel is left in the carburetta for an extended period of time, it will go off, which will end up blocking jets, which will reduce the flow of fuel causing the engine to run rough, and even cut out and not start. See below a photo of some petrol that has come out of the carb of an outboard that had been left over the winter

Salt water corrosion

Whenever you use an outboard engine in salt water, your going to have issues with the salt water making its way into the coolant system of your engine. The answer to this is certainly not to avoid using your boat in salt water as whats the fun in that! However there are some steps that you can take to help prevent the salt water from damaging your engine.

1. Flush your engine: It is really important to flush your engine out with fresh water every time it comes out of the water, and if your boat is kept on the water you want to make sure that you flush it regularly in a marina. Every engine is slightly different, but usually you can either use muffs that go over the water intakes of the engine and attach to a hose, put the leg of the engine in a bucket of water, making sure that the water is above the level of the cav plate above the propellor, or use the flush port that some engines have. You then want to run the engine up, making sure the tell tale is strong until the water coming out of the tell tale is no longer salty and is warm. This is usually about 10 minutes for a thorough flush of the engine.
2. Hose your engine down: we’ve now covered flushing the salt out from inside your engine, however there will still be salt on the outside, so it is important that like washing your boat you rinse down your engine as well. Just be aware that you don’t want to flood the electrics of the engine with water.

Keeping your boat on the water for the summer?

Here are some tips to prevent your engine from needing unnecessary repairs:

• When leaving your boat on the water check the water is deep enough that your engine won’t risk being sat in the mud, or hitting hard ground .
• If you have to leave the boat in shallow water, be sure to lift the engine up before it gets into the shallow water.
• If you are using the boat in salt water, its not so easy to flush the engine out, so it is really important that the first job you do when you get the boat out of the water next is to flush the engine out with fresh water.