Oil Injection Issues !!!

B

Bill Gass

Active member
I have a 1997 25 HP Evinrude outboard
(3 Cyl, Oil injection) This spring it started acting up on me. It would all of a suden die when I was running at full throttle. You could go for 500 meters or a Km or so and then it would quit. Took it into a local repair shop (which shall remain anominous for now) They said that the oil injection unit had quit working and as a result my motor was blown and would need to be completely rebuilt. New pistons, rings, hone out the cylinders, the whole nine yards to the tune of $1600 minimum. So anyway I just told them that I can't afford that and I'll just come pick it up and pay for the hours labor, which I did. Since then I've had numerous mechanics from work (not marine mechanics) look at it since the repair shop had taken the head cover off. And all of them said that it didn't look like it needed a motor job to them. So I started researching my motor and found out that there is a system to prevent engine overheating called the "Slow System" which will keep the engine from idleing over 2500 rpm if the water intake is clogged or if the oil resevoir goes dry. I suspect that it actually monitors engine temp. So it was recommended to me by a friend that I bypass the oil injection system and start mixing the oil right in the gas myself. I did this and took it out for run tonight. Actually I held it wide open and went up and down the Oromocto river several Km's each way to see if it would quit on me. To my delight it did not. I was out for over 2 hours and the motor worked without a hitch, knock on wood. I'll be taking it down to Harvey Lake this summer and it'll get alot of use down there at the cabin. If I get through the summer with out it blowing up on me or the problem returning, well then I'll be prepared to open up with both barrels , figuratively ofcourse. But my feeling right now is that the repair shop was trying to take me for a ride. I will keep you all posted on how my motor is running.

Bill Gass
Oromocto, NB
 
Get a compression tester and check it..sounds like it was a low oil sensor...did you modify it so you could run straight oil/mix fuel?
 
I'm a fan of Johson & Evinrude motors, and their S.L.O.W. (Speed Limiting Overheat Warning) system is great. Unfortuntely their oil-injection system sucks. That's what makes their SLOW system so great.

I had heard of problems with their V.R.O oil-injection system, and being the anal kinda guy I am I always pre-mixed oil in case the injector failed. Lucky me that my retentiveness saved my own arse. I was running a new 1995 60hp Evinrude just a few months after a purchased it on a goldeneye hunt in near-zero temps when my injector failed. If I hadn't pre-mixed I wouldv'e blown the motor. Since the motor was still in warranty I let them replace the injector/pump/reservoir assemblies and kept on using it and my pre-mix routine until the warranty expired which I then removed the whole V.R.O system and just pre-mixed after that. Never had another problem.

The S.L.O.W. system is great because in the event of overheating it will automatically restrict the speed of the motor to try to prevent damage to it. Of course, I wouldn't want to have a problem that caused the S.L.O.W. system to kick-in during a big windstorm that might make it hard to run over the swells, but overall I think it's a good system.
 
I had a 97 OMC SeadDrive 115 hp on my old offshore boat. The first thing I did when I got it was bypass the oil injection system. Didn't want to be 20 miles offshore and have it crap out. It ran just fine mixed at 50:1.
 
Yes I would like to check the compression on the cylinders. Cause if I needed a motor job then at least one of the cylinders should show a lower compression. Apparently after three pulls on the cord it should reach max compression? Thats what I was told. I really think that the repair shop was right about the oil injection failing how I think that the SLOW sustem saved my motor. As for the oil sensor, the oil tank is still full which cheats any level switch in there and there is a light that comes on if the oil level is low, and this light never came on. I've had it come on before when I was out in rough water and the tank was only 1/3-1/4 full I assume because of the oil slopping around. The thing that confused me about the SLOW system is that the owners manuel says that it restricts engine idleing to 2500 rpm, but when I was running full throttle it would just kill the engine? Does this sound normal?

Bill Gass
Oromocto, NB
 
I'm not sure what is all involved with the oil injection setup...I know someone makes a kit to do away with it so you can run 50:1...I wouldn't trust a setup that can fry my engine when I can mix my own and be sure. The S.L.O.W system restricts RPM's..I'm surprised that you could get it back up higher than 2500 after it shut down. Most of the guys I know say to pull/crank the motor till the compression stops building..write it down as to which cylinder is which and they should be within 10 to 15 % of each other. When you had the head off..did the cylinder walls look scratched or scored? Was there any little chunks that looked like ring material? Were the domes in the head pitted?
 
Hi Lee

I'm not a mechanic but the cylinder walls were smooth, no pits anywhere, no rogue peices of metal anywhere. When I had it out on the water two evenings ago I didn't notice any drop in power she scatted right along.

A kit to change your motor over from oil injection to a mix it yourself system? What would that contain? I just disconnected the fuel line from the oil injection pump and connected those two lines together through the fuel filter. Then I put short pieces fuel line hose on the oil injection pump and plugged the end with short piece of wooden dowel and hose clamps, to prevent oil leakage and left it still hooked up to the oil resevoir. Not sure if this is the proper way to do it but seemed to work OK.

Bill G.
 
I guess if it doesn't set off the alarm buzzers...I think some of those oil systems had the fuel pump built into them..I think there is a possibility of sucking air into the fuel system if not done correctly..you do not want that.Maybe Tom will elaborate. I have read a lot of posts on the iboat forums dealing with change over from these systems..you could go there and see if what you did has any negative consequences. I think the shop tried to hose you from the sounds of things. You might want to get a FACTORY Specific manual for the motor..they have all the info for trouble shooting and specs that the commonly available Seloc or Chiltons don't have..or mess up. Wonder if it may have been a head gasket and when you put it back together with a new one,it fixed the problem??
 
The way my outboard is set up is the oil pump is a seperate unit. It has three lines connected to it. One from the oil tank coming into the bottom, and then in and out for the gas. There are no wires or shafts running to it. The oil tank has some wires running down into in to it kind of like a sending unit on a car gas tank. So I figure that there must be some sort of switch or level monitor to indicate when the oil is low. Yes I will check out some other forums to see what eveyone else is saying. So any way the gas is now totally seperated from the oil system so I don't think that sucking air into the gas line would be an issue as a result of the changes that I have made. I should take a digital picture and post it. Of course you guys would all be laughing at my poor mans conversion kit. (wooden dowels)

Bill G.
 
Bill, here is the url for iboats..these guys are the "Duckboats.net" of the outboard world.


http://forums.iboats.com/?ubb=forum;f=28
 
Either bypass the low oil switch, or just leave it full and pre mix your fuel. Cheap and simple. My buddies 120 Evinrude had the same problem and that was our fix.

Kyle
 
Hi Bill
I have a 1998 35 hp Evinrude with the exact same set up as you. I have ran the oil tank down to low and the SLOW system turns on, but it didn't kill the motor, just limits the rpm's. So I agree with you that this was not your problem. I also experienced it shutting down completely quite a few times. In fact if you were running wide open, it would shut down so fast that the water moving over the prop would actually lift the motor out of the water. I tried all kinds of things, and my thoughts were oil injection also. But then Tom asked about the fuel line, turns out that the one way valve in the ball had broken, and the little stopper in there would float around in there, and totally by chance once in a while plug the outlet end of the squeeze ball. It took a while to figure this out since it happened so haphazardly, but once I replace the fuel line (so graciously offered up by Tom) the problem never returned. If you are pre-mixing and it happens again down the road, maybe this is the problem. Also, when the motor did quit you could wait a minute or two, then restart and go wide open for 1-3 minutes, then it would die again. Then the next time you used it, it may run all day, or quit sometime. You just never knew. I have noticed with mine, if you pull one of those plugs on the carbs, and place a white rag up to the gas that pours out, you can kinda see the tint of your oil, if you wanted to see if the injection system is still working??!?!?!
 
I had a 2000 35hp johnson that had oil injection "issues" only I didnt know that till it was too late and it wore a hole through a cylinder wall, this one had a seperate hose to each cylinder and 1 had melted somehow. If any one has an outboard with oil injection I would reccomend bypassing it ASAP. Its not that hard to mix the oil and gas.
 
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