lashk
New Member
Took out the Sportster LE DI for the third time since I've owned it and "boom" your worst fear. I'll tell each step as it happened. Stopped and got gas on the way at Shell (boat was on 1/2 tank). Then put the boat in the water and idled out to open river. While idling it seemed the boat smoked more that before but I had fogged the engine after previous trip and hadn't started it since. Got past the no wake zone and took off. Boat ran great. I was running around 45 mph with 4 people in the boat. At 45 mph the rpms were around 6500. Ran for about 20-30 mins. in and out of no wake zones and no problems. The smoking seem back to normal. On the way back I noticed I was running a little over 40 mph at a little more than 3/4 throttle and if I gave it full the engine didn't seem to go any faster. We then entered another no wake zone for a few minutes and the took off again. After about 2 minutes at 3/4 throttle, the boat was running great, all of a sudden the engine began to cough and sputter. I thought I make have run over a rope and sucked it up and quikly got off the gas. I then tried to slowly move around and the engine finally died. After a few minutes I got it cranked again but it ran terrible. We were pretty far out so it decided as long as it was running I would try to get it back. I had to run it around 2800-3000 rpms to limp back. A few times I gave more gas and it would sputter and shake. It took about 20 minutes to get back to the ramp like this and at some times I thought it was going to die. Funny thing was at times it seemed to straighten out and run ok. There were no alarms at all. Anyway, I made it back and got it home. I looked in the engine compartment expecting to find scrap metal, and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Pulled the plugs and they seemed fine although they were kind of black. The intake grate was clear. One thing I might mention is that I notice a red hose last night that was in bad shape on the bottom of it where it had been rubbing the engine bracket (which is rusted and rough). It comes from under the fuel rail (picture 1) and goes to the back of the boat and ties into something (picture 2). I don't know what it is for and if it had failed if it could have caused my problem. Any ideas would help.
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