Picked up an 8' Hydro/Runabout thing last weekend, what is it?

[ADDvanced]

Lot of parts came in the past few days, couple questions for the hive mind:

1. I just filled the gas tank and now I want to rebuild the carb. The fuel shutoff is on the carb. Any tricks here? Or just carefully dump it all back into a container and remove the carb?

2. What style of prop should I be running?

[ZUL8TR]

1.Drain the tank
2.The prop in the pictures as a start.

[ADDvanced]

Rebuilt carb:

Was then waiting on gearcase, finally picked that up last week, wanted to get on the water a few days ago. Was rigging the hull but all the parts from Portage Bay to hook up the remote throttle were pretty poorly made, nothing fit, center to center of the holes was off, then it was contacting the choke mechanism, then it was hitting the advance/throttle lever, started chewing away at things with my grinder to make stuff fit, needed a few more MM of clearance and wound up cracking my coil mounting plate. Pissed. So it looks like I'm done this year.

[dwhitford]

Initial needle valve settings for your Tillotson carb: high-speed needle - 1-1/2 turns open from fully closed; low-speed needle - 1 turn open from fully closed. Fine tune these settings with the engine running.

[ADDvanced]

Today I decided to just say F it and I remounted the gold cylinder above a bit closer towards the center of the motor, threw the gas tank on her, installed the gearcase, and started rigging the boat.

Throttle cable is done. Steering is almost done, need to run to the hardware store tomorrow morning. Also, I don't have the trim angle pin, I was just going to use some threaded rode with a couple wing nuts.

Before I run her... what is the deal with the rope across the back of the lower unit on a lot of race boats? To keep the engine from flipping up? How would that happen?

[DeanFHobart]

Today I decided to just say F it and I remounted the gold cylinder above a bit closer towards the center of the motor, threw the gas tank on her, installed the gearcase, and started rigging the boat.

Throttle cable is done. Steering is almost done, need to run to the hardware store tomorrow morning. Also, I don't have the trim angle pin, I was just going to use some threaded rode with a couple wing nuts.

Before I run her... what is the deal with the rope across the back of the lower unit on a lot of race boats? To keep the engine from flipping up? How would that happen?

The motor will flip up when you back off of the throttle or just slow down… then you don’t have any control.

[ADDvanced]

I keep getting server errors when editing this post

[ADDvanced]

Makes sense, thanks!

Couple update videos:

Rebuilding the Tillotson AJ19 Carb w new gaskets and foam float:

Building a lightweight fairing that fits the actual design of the boat:

First start of my KE7H in 25 years:

Rigging the throttle/steering and dealing with all the parts that didn't fit from portage bay systems:

[ADDvanced]

This was disappointing. Looking for any advice....

[bill hoctor]

[Albert]

Looks like you got some great advice in the YouTube comments.

I can’t believe I’m saying that without sarcasm.

[DeanFHobart]

This was disappointing. Looking for any advice....

If you haven’t called either or both Alan VanWeele.. 337-304-0379 or David VanWeele.. 386-295-3391…. They have the parts you will most likely need…. And they have lots of knowledge about these motors… call them. Looks like to me that you need to rebuild the carburetor and magneto or get ones that are already rebuilt… call them.

I just looked up on google… search ‘Mercury KG4’….. lots of info there.

[Albert]

Pitter Patter.