I hunted the week before the end of the first split and parked the boat with about a gallon of gas in the tank.

Before I hunted last weekend (first time out in about a month) I replaced all the fuel hoses and clamps, fuel filter, fresh top off with 93oct, and added half a can of sea foam. Went out Friday and ran for about 3hours just looking and riding and the boat ran flawlessly. No issues, plenty of power.. All systems go for the following morning....

Launched the boat and took off toward the spot we found... Got about 4-500yds from the ramp and the boat started to stumble, and fell on its face... I could squeeze the bubble and it would pick up and go, no issue. As long as I gave the bulb a pump every few seconds I was fine... Without it, it would stumble and even die, but start right back up.

Also, my exhaust gets HOT running with a heavy load but it always has... In the dark, it'll usually glow really dull red, nothing I was honestly alarmed about though. I did notice that this particular morning, the exhaust looked hotter and even saw a faint flame from the outlet of the muffler. She was warm!! But never lost power and got us where we needed to go.

My first assumption was the little vacuum fuel pump was bad since it acted starved for fuel... But yesterday evening I walked past the boat and noticed the gas in the filter was an orangey color, almost like diesel that's sat for a while. But the gas hadn't been in there for 72hrs... I don't know....

I'm about to walk outside to see if I can narrow it down... Any suggestions?

Got it.... Kinked fuel supply hose going into the fuel pump... It was old and routed poorly (from the factory I guess) and the added weight of the fuel line and filter hanging on it just made it worse.

Previously I replaced all the 5/16" hose going up to the engine from the tank, this was after the 1/4" fitting going into the pump. So I replaced that 6-8" long piece of 1/4" and re routed it so the bends weren't so tight. I also addressed the fuel coloring. I disconnected it from the engine and gave the bulb a few good squeezes and it blew nasty orange gas out of the line until 5-6 pumps. Then it cleared up. Reconnected everything after that.

I also checked my plugs. They looked ok after about 20hrs of run time so I cleaned, re gapped them and put them in the dry box for spares. Installed a fresh set of NGK's and checked valve lash just for grins which was also still good to go.

So after a little lovin', it looks like I'll be good to go and try to make an evening hunt tomorrow since I'll be off work early. Most likely hunt Wednesday morning also before I load up and head to Louisiana to see the kin-folk.

Good thing you got it figured out before dguidry saw this and told you to shake the tank!

Hahaha!!!

It's normally always something simple with this thing...

Can't decide to keep it and build/buy a SD rig and have both or sell it off.. Or just keep what I've got.

Appears the hose issue was not the problem. Same scenario this morning. Wouldn't run unless the bulb was kept pumped. I'll be putting a pump on it before it's on the water again....