'96 Mercury 2.5 260

[newtothegame]

I've been around boats for years, but am new to owning a race engine. This engine has a little over 90 original hours on it and is in great condition compresion has been checked, a new water pump installed, and the lower unit oil changed. I took it out on the lake the other day and it ran good until I shut the engine down. I then had trouble getting it to crank. The engine would turn over, but would not fire. I finally got it to crank and it seemed to bog down getting out of the hole. After i ran it good it was fine. I'm running a 32:1 mix and using klotz oil and supreme pump gas. Going to pull the spark plugs and clean them this weekend and put a new fuel filter on. In addition the system has 2 additional fuel filters that I think I'm going to take off. My mechanic keeps talking about fuel starvation. By the way this engine is on a Bullet 20XD. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Bryan Berrong]

I have the same motor on a 96 20xd and I don't know that your problem is the same but it sounds the same as the one I had ! Mine you could run it hard down the lake stop to fish for 10 to 20 min. go to crank it and it would flood and take a few seconds to get it cranked ! To solve this we wound up putting a timed delay relay on the fuel pump and have'nt had any problems since !! Once you get this little problem fixed the motors are a whole lot of fun to have !

[us1]

It could be flooding because the enriching wire is still hooked up to the starter solenoid. Everyone removes the wire from the solenoid and put it on a separate switch so you can choke it from the dash only when it need it, not automatically every time you start the motor. Look for two yellow with a red strip wires on the starter solenoid.

[chad202]

My wires are disconnected like US1 is saying. But what I do after running and sitting for a while is press the hotfoot about 1/4 way, start it up, hold it there for a couple seconds then it's fine.

[newtothegame]

Appreciate all the help. I'll try that. I fouled my plugs out the other day. I pulled them and cleaned them up and put them back in. Also leaned up my mix to 40:1. Spoke with a tech at Klotz the other day and he said this was ok. What are your thoughts on leaning the mix up. Took the boat out over the 4th and hit 86. Can't say I've grown them big enough to top the 90 mark that the guyI bought it from claims it can hit. Anyway appreciate the help.

[Jay Smith]

I'd never run a 260 any leaner than the manufacture suggests at 32:1. Also by leaning the oil fuel ratio you have lessened the viscosity and allowed MORE fuel ( a thinner mixture ) to pass through the metering system with the same amount of fuel pressure behind that injector. The ECU's on 260's and Drag were set up at an oil ratio to be mixed @ 32:1 with the suitable gas for the compression used. Also some of the newer ECU's have a circuit that operates the fuel pump instead of the keyed switch hot purple wire or a hot wire hooked to a toggle. It is the red with the blue tracer coming from the EFI harness ... Call me and I'll walk you through the wiring......Also John is telling you the straight story on the yellow with the red tracer.

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my opinion,