![mercury motor wont start mercury motor wont start](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/e1h-blqDm4U/hq720.jpg)
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Wasps, spiders, and other critters are well-known for clogging these fittings up, and that can significantly affect engine performance.
#Mercury motor wont start portable#
If your boat doesn’t have a portable tank, but instead an integral tank with a fuel vent that’s plumbed to the outside of the boat, inspect that vent. If your outboard motor isn’t running at its best, check the fuel vent on your portable tank to make sure it’s open. Simply twist it open and monitor your engine for improvement. If it isn’t, it will cause your engine to become fuel starved, run rough, and eventually stall.
![mercury motor wont start mercury motor wont start](https://www.bornagainboating.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Outboard-fuel-system.jpg)
If you’ve got a portable tank and your engine is misbehaving, the first thing you want to do is check to make sure the valve on your portable tank is fully open. If we had a dollar for every time our boats started sputtering and running rough because we forgot to open the fuel vent on our portable fuel tanks, well, we’d have quite a few bucks rolling around. Read on to find out about some steps to take when your outboard’s got an attitude problem. Some problems can even be solved with the twist of only two fingers. So, what should you do when your outboard engine is puttering instead of purring? Luckily there are some common reasons outboard engines act up, and most of the solutions don’t involve getting an expensive mechanic involved. Still, there are others of us out there that have older, more temperamental outboards and, believe it or not, even relatively new outboards can act up at times. They’re so dependable, in fact, that we often take their reliability for granted. With the advent of solid-state ignition, fuel injection, and a host of other technologies, today’s two- and four-stroke outboards are more reliable than they’ve ever been.