Expert: tyler boehner - 2/27/2008

Question
I have some severe tightness in the steering of a 91 Rajun Cajun I recently bought that has a 150 HP Johnson on it. Is there something I can do to help this? Also, on the same motor, when running it it often bogs down, stopping completely. When I look at the fuel filter, it will have gunk all in it. I pump this gunk out, restart it, and it works fine until that build-up happens again. Is there any better way I can combat this problem?

Answer
Tightness in the steering is hard to get rid of.  Not much will help.  There are a couple of grease zirks on the tilt tube and on the pivit point of the motor on the mid section that may help but usually a new cable is all that can be done.  If you can, flushing the fuel tank is the best thing to do but i understand that isn't very easy in most boats.  The easier thing to do is to put a canister style "the fuel filter that looks like a car oil filter" fuel filter in somewhere between your fuel tank and the motor.  Just cut the line and splice one in somewhere that you can mount it.  In my personal preferance is to use a Yamaha 10 micron filter.  It is a bigger filter and doesn't let anything by.  It doesn't matter that you are running a johnson, you can splice in any filter.