Slow acceleration, throttle issues on 2002 Sportster LE

[squorch]

Hello all - put the boat in the water for the second time this season today after buying it in February. The two issues from the first time (seized reverser cable and sticking steering cable) are no longer, but I ran into a couple new issues after a while today.

The engine seems to stick at 5500-6000 rpm when accelerating and takes a long time to get up on plane - anywhere from 30 seconds to requiring my wife to move up to the observer seat to start the planing process. After getting up on plane she has no issues wrt throttle response but I didn't have the chance to get her up over 35 mph, as the bay was too choppy. She got 25mph from halfway on the throttle while up on plane though.

The other, more pressing issue occurred after 2.5-ish hours out on the water. With the throttle advanced more than halfway the engine would drop rpms then come back to the original commanded setting. The more we continued to advance the throttle, the lower the usable region shrank, eventually settling down to around 3500 rpm Engine response was normal from idle through 3500, enabling us to limp back home.

Any ideas would be most appreciated!

 

[Dr Honda]

Sounds like you have some fuel issues.

Time to clean the carbs.

One question... when the RPM's are surging... if you pushed the throttle up... would the engine die?

 

[squorch]

The engine never died when the RPMs were surging, but there was one other thing I forgot to mention: when advancing the throttle from idle, there seemed to be a region where the engine was starved of fuel - if you didn't advance it fast enough, the engine died, but if you kept going past the dead zone the engine caught again around 4000 RPM.