PieceOfWork2004
New Member
After a whole season of messing with my '96 Challenger I finally thought I had all the gremlins worked out but now another nasty one has snuck up on me. I have started it up in my driveway quite a few times over the last two weeks just to make sure everything was working as expected before I got stuck on the ramp with a dead boat again. Everything seemed fine, it fired up on the first shot almost every time.
I finally got some time to take it down to the lake this weekend and decided to fire it up one more time before I left just to make sure everything was good to go. It started up just fine but seemed to idle at a much higher RPM than it previously did. The tach is broken so I'm basing this observation solely on the noise generated by the engine but if I had to venture a guess I'd say it was somewhere in the 3-4k RPM range.
If I put the thing in gear it instantly red lines, it seems like the throttle was stuck wide open but as best as I can tell it's not. I can see the throttle cable moving back and forth and the valves at the base of the carb opening and closing. Half the time I can shut down the engine by pulling the DESS key or hitting the stop/start button but there have been a few occasions where I had to either yank the choke or turn off the fuel system all together.
A friend suggested taking a look at the throttle linkages to see if something was bound up but as best as I can tell they're good to go. The throttle has a little more play in than I remember, maybe an inch or so before it does anything, but he said that's pretty typical.
I can't think of anything that changed in the span of two days... all I did was put the airbox and filter back on but that's about it. I looked for anything in that area that I could have jarred while hanging upside down trying to get the cover back on and didn't see anything that was out of whack.
As always, thanks again for your help. I'm not a PWC expert by any stretch of the imagination but with your help I'm slowly beginning to figure out how these things work!
I finally got some time to take it down to the lake this weekend and decided to fire it up one more time before I left just to make sure everything was good to go. It started up just fine but seemed to idle at a much higher RPM than it previously did. The tach is broken so I'm basing this observation solely on the noise generated by the engine but if I had to venture a guess I'd say it was somewhere in the 3-4k RPM range.
If I put the thing in gear it instantly red lines, it seems like the throttle was stuck wide open but as best as I can tell it's not. I can see the throttle cable moving back and forth and the valves at the base of the carb opening and closing. Half the time I can shut down the engine by pulling the DESS key or hitting the stop/start button but there have been a few occasions where I had to either yank the choke or turn off the fuel system all together.
A friend suggested taking a look at the throttle linkages to see if something was bound up but as best as I can tell they're good to go. The throttle has a little more play in than I remember, maybe an inch or so before it does anything, but he said that's pretty typical.
I can't think of anything that changed in the span of two days... all I did was put the airbox and filter back on but that's about it. I looked for anything in that area that I could have jarred while hanging upside down trying to get the cover back on and didn't see anything that was out of whack.
As always, thanks again for your help. I'm not a PWC expert by any stretch of the imagination but with your help I'm slowly beginning to figure out how these things work!
