Fishing Forum

I have been reading that Merc 4 strokes are having a carb problem. It seems that they leak gas when something in the carb gets stuck in the tilted postion. In fact, this other site says that it is happening ALOT and dealers are familiar with the problem and will fix it (for free?).

In fact, on my 2000 15 hp. 4 stroke Merc. it happened about 2 months ago up at the Gorge. The engine was drowning in gas and would flood almost immediately. Had my brother tap on the carb and sure enough the float value (or something) came unstuck and the problem was solved.

I believe the reason mine mal-functioned was using low grade gas because I just put lawn mower regular into the kicker tank. Since then I use medium grade and have no issues.

Have any of you guys ran into this gas overflow problem on your Merc kicker?

Are any local dealers aware of the problem?
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Did a little more research and found this:

The problem is this. The float on the 9.9 and 15hp Mercs and Yamahas are none adjustable and about every fourth or fifth carb assembled has a float that bottoms out before it is able to place enough presure on the needle to properly shut off fuel supply to float bowl. This is why some do it and some do not.This is a design flaw which simply could have been avoided by having a adjustable float.This problem has nothing to do with certain fuels or bad fuel.Reminder that fuel does now start to rot in 30 days and to always keep your fuel stabilized especially four strokes.
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