HAVING
SEARCHED the advertisements in vain for an extra-long-shaft 6-horsepower outboard
motor, I broke down the other day and bought a brand new one from the
registered dealer. I wasn’t impressed
with the service. Among other things, I asked him two questions.
The first
was: “Is there a fuel filter on this engine?”
“No,” he
said.
There was,
of course, as I discovered when I got home and looked in the owner’s manual.
The second
question was this:
“How do I
start the engine if the man driving the dinghy falls overboard, taking the emergency
kill-switch lanyard with him? How do I
start the motor to get back to him?”
“Don’t
know,” said the dealer. “I’ve never been asked that question before.”
It’s hard to
believe that a man who sells new outboards for a living had never thought of
that question for himself.
As you
probably know, the coiled, red, kill-switch lanyard is meant to be attached to
your wrist or clothing. If you fall
overboard it jerks a small semi-circular disk out of a switch on the front of the
engine. That allows a spring-loaded button to close inward and stop the motor
immediately.
But you
can’t start the motor unless that little disk is replaced. And there it is, dangling on the end of a
cord attached to your driver floating 50 yards astern.
Now, if you
look inside the engine cover you’ll see two thin wires leading to the kill
switch. My bet is that the act of pushing in the switch, which happens when the
disk is removed, either completes a circuit, grounding the spark plug so that
it won’t fire, or it breaks the hot-wire circuit to the spark plug, thus
preventing it from firing.
In the
second case, I suspect there is a good chance that if you simply cut the
circuit between the magneto and the spark plug, you’re likely to blow a diode
or do some other permanent damage to the
engine. So my guess is that the safety
switch simply grounds the circuit to the spark plug and stops it firing.
That being
the case, you ought to be able to get the engine going again by fiddling with
the two wires inside the engine cover.
You’ve either got to cut one or the other, or maybe you should cut both
and twist them together.
Does anyone
a little better informed than my dealer know how to get the motor going again?
Does anyone understand the actual function of the emergency kill switch?
Today’s Thought
There’s lots
of people—this town wouldn’t hold them—Who don’t know much excepting what’s told them.
— Will Carleton, City Ballads.
Tailpiece
“Waiter,
there’s a fly in my soup.”(16) “Ah, thank you, sir, the dog must have missed it.”
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
