greenhornet73

Same here! Thanks for all the responses and troubleshooting help.

You got that right!

Nice job getting to them early. I did the opposite and put in at 10:30 and couldn’t maintain enough boat control to give myself even a decent chance to connect with a fish. It was just enough of a NE blow to spin me around if I took my hand off the wheel. Glad to hear you’re still on them.

Just got home from a 3 hour troll and the oil level is still perfect. Easy fix with a replaced thermostat.

I can’t stress enough to occasionally jerk the rod or give it a steady pull then drop back motion during mid-troll. You’ll grab those followers that otherwise may not strike a steadily moving lure. I learned this trolling spinnerbaits and bucktails for pike and muskies in Ottawa.

I ran a third quart of oil through the crankcase today to make sure all of the gas/oil mixture was out and filled it with good oil. Fired it up and ran it for 10 minutes on almost half throttle with muffs on. Checked the oil after and was perfectly clean and level didn’t change. I’ll run it on the lake this weekend but for now it seems replacing the thermostat did the trick. Thanks everyone for all the input. If anything changes over the weekend I will post it to help anyone in the future with the same problem.

I replaced the thermostat and changed the oil twice. Will fill again tonight and run it and post what I find.

Seriously, makes my transom look like a car top boat!

I’ve been experimenting with different setups each time out and have caught fish each time. So far it is one rod that takes the most hits on each trip. One day it was a planer board flat line with crank bait, next time was a 1 color with a spoon, and last time out was the downrigger but over deeper water which makes sense. The one constant is that I have been running every line on one side of the boat instead of spreading them over a larger area.

I really hope not

It is not an EFI model

I’m going to talk to the marina where I bought it used last spring and see what they say. I trailered it all last season and didn’t have a problem so something has happened this spring. If the thermostat doesn’t do it then I’ll bring it in for service.

Interesting conversation in there that is very pertinent to my situation. I trailer long distances with the motor down and also only troll with it at fairly low speeds. It doesn’t have a lot of hours on it and I can’t imagine it could have a cracked head gasket or anything serious like that so soon. I’m going to change the oil and thermostat this week and disconnect the fuel line when I trailer it on my next trip out and keep an eye on the oil while I’m out there. Thanks guys for all the possible factors that might be causing this.

Yeah, last night I thought condensation because it was milky but the level wasn’t much higher. Today it poured out when I pulled the dipstick after running it over an hour on the lake. It was running fine but wanted to keep an eye on it. Definitely smells like gas in there.

Yep, that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Really hope that’s all it was.

When I pulled the dipstick the oil started running out meaning it was collecting water so I shut it down. Looking it up online it appears this is typical for a failed thermostat that is stuck open.