Saving Old Seagulls

Right chaps, see if you can sort this mess out. I have just become the proud owner of a rather nice metallic silver Kingfisher, built early 1991. Yes I know all about the horrible roller big-end bearings but was assured by the seller that he has always run it on 25:1 and the engine sounds tight and smooth. Great so far. Before fitting to my small cruiser I wanted to check that the Kingfisher is free from faults so spent the morning messing about in the garden with a dustbin full of water, a park bench and the kingfisher and run it for at least an hour, restarting from warm/hot and all sorts, just to check. Well everything was great until I decided to check the external tank. Plugged it in, primed it and presto, everything worked great, for about 45 seconds! The engine faltered and died, lack of fuel was confirmed by checking the float bowl. Again, I primed it and it started first go, run for about 45 seconds and died again. So after stripping a few bits and bobs I found that the fuel pump is not working. A chat with John led me to stick me finger over the vacume hole and try as I might I could feel no suction pulling the motor over with the plug removed (earthed on the cylinder head of course).

John kindly dug out a Seagull service bulletin from the early 90's and found that a small number of 'fishers escaped from the factory minus a vital bit of machining that allows crankcase vacume to be transmitted to the top of the diaphragm. Great! It looks like mine missed the recall! I phoned a helpful company in 'Oxford' and the very nice lady said she knew of no such fault or subsequent recall.

To get to the point, at last, have any of you chaps encountered this problem, and if so, how did you rectify it? John suggested the use of an electric fuel pump but I have doubts about the ability of my little solar panel to keep the 80amp hour battery topped up.

All suggestions most welcome chaps.

Thanks.

Haven't come across this I'm afraid, but certainly a strip down just to machine a hole seems a little drastic.

My first thought is to ask if its possible to mount the external tank higher on the boat so it is level with the motors tank so it gravity feeds and you don't need a pump? ( put a packing case or similar on your park bench to test! )

If thats no good then I would probably go with Johns idea. I don't think an electric pump would take much juice at all but if you are really worried you could fit an alternator to the motor I think.

Kingfisher update

Well. After a long chat with Charlesuk (thanks again mate), I have tried the following...
Checked all fuel lines for air leaks
Replaced diaphragm and gasket
Changed fuel line snap connector
Generally wiped the Kingfishers nose etc.

Primed fine, fired up first pull and run... for about 1 minute before faltering, quick pump of primer bulb and it recovered, for about 30-45 seconds and begun to falter, quick pump of primer bulb and picked up as before.

I raised the external tank above level of carb and no problem, ran for ages, lowered fuel tank to just below level of carb and, you guessed it, 45secs later it died.

Tried it again on internal tank and starts and runs fine.

Are we looking at one of Johns dodgy engines I wonder.

Has anyone else come across one of these aberrant engines and if so any hints/tips on rectification would be most appreciated.

Thanks chaps

Steve

Well, that was fun! Finally sorted the non pumping problem with the fuel supply. As John stated, there was no drilling in the crankcase, so clearly this engine did manage to miss the recall back in '91. So, after a long chat with Charles UK I took the bull by the metaphorical horns (or the Kingfisher by the beak) and sorted it out as follows.

1. First heat up and bend a perfectly good 10mm combo spanner, two right angles, one at each end does the trick. This means you can loosen the securing nut holding the vacume pipe/securing bolt without removing flywheel.
2. Break second finger on left had so that it fits into the air intake space to remove/refit said nut and washer.
3. Remove fixing bolt on fuel pump base, then remove filter.
4. Undo and remove pump base, diaphragm and gasket.
5. Using large flat head screwdriver remove vacume pipe/fixing bolt.
6. With piston at TDC, using a 1/8 drill bit CAREFULLY drill up the inside of the hole left by the vacume pipe/fixing bolt at about 45 degrees. Scary. drill slowly until you break through crankcase. I coated the drill bit in grease to catch swarf and washed down the tube with lighter fuel to clean it out.
7. Drink coffee.
8. Reassemble and prime, tickle and choke and voila! Starts first time and has been running in tank for 20 minutes so far.

Job Done.

Thanks to Charles, John and the rest of you chaps for advice and ideas.

Steve