Read the saga below the video

During the winter of 2015 I pulled the 2 stroke 8hp Yamaha outboard off Zippey to bring home and rebuild. It had been a while and she was running a bit rough. I was very proud of myself to rebuilding an outboard motor correctly, the first time. I was overjoyed when the motor fired up and ran flawlessly on its stand.

I remounted the motor on Zippey’s motor mount expecting to have a great summer of fun, however a few weeks after the motor started having issue. Pieces of something were getting stuck in the cooling water outlet. During one outing I had to  clean the outlet every couple minutes to keep water flowing. Ironically the motor overheated and seized up as I was motoring to the boatyard for a haul out.

I replaced the motor same day with a new powerful 4 stroke Yamaha 9.9 high thrust but I kept the old motor around to use as a learning project for outboard internals.

When I got around to playing with the motor I found a significant amount of sand inside it! How it got there I do not know. I cleaned out the sand and reset everything and now the motor is running great! It blew smoke like none other for a few minutes after starting, but that is to be expected after the motor sat for so long.