85 Marathon problems...please help!

Grinds6

Hello All,

Purchased an 85 Marathon a few weeks ago that had been sitting outside for a little over a year or so. Got it up and running after cleaning the fuel pump and carb up and fine tuning a little bit.

Have a couple questions for the cart guru's:

Sometimes when I go to start the cart it wont turn over or do anything, (battery is fine because it does the same thing when a booster box is attached to the battery) if I play with the foward/reverse switch sometimes it will start up, other times I have to play with the key and it starts, not sure if this is coincidental or not but has anybody heard of this before? I am going to take the shifter off tonight, but wonder if there is any contacts that can be cleaned or am I just wasting my time doing this?

I also see some posts on here where people say block off the oil pump and per-mix the fuel @ 128:1...? why is this?

The person that owned the cart before me sliced the governor cable, which is fine, but now at slow speeds it wont stay steady speed it jerks back and forth...any way to solve this without putting the governor back on?

Lastly for now...When I am driving it at full speed for a bit, sometimes it will seem to lose power/speed and still drive, but go slow....is this some sort of rev limiter or something like that?

Thanks in advance everyone, you all are a great help!

BGW

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Grinds6

I am also looking for the arm rests, and a top for this cart if anyone has/knows where to get these please let me know.

Thanks

Dave Box

Hello Grinds6, Well those are nice easy questions so let's get to it.

If your cart has sat a while is is quite common for corrosion to set in. Now if it is your gut feeling that it is the F-N-R switch then it probably is. The first step would be to hit it with some WD40 and move the lever in each direction several times. This may be enough to clean it up. Another common suspect is the ground point on the chassis. You should remove the nut and bolt and clean the frame to bare metal. Also clean the cable lugs until they shine. There should be three cables, one from the battery negative, one to the F-N-R switch and one to the engine block (this one is very important and yet for some reason seems to be omitted on a depressingly regular basis). Try these things and get back to us as there are other culprits to look at.

The reason that guys (myself included) remove the oil pump is that the first sign of failure is when the engine seizes up due lack of oil. There are many recorded instance of the engine letting go, the crank exploding and the unfortunate driver having to go to hospital to have a piston enema reversal. OK I made that last bit up, but you get the point. If you want to remove the pump and go to premix call out and we can show you what to do.

Your last two points are I suspect related. The missing governor has nothing to do with your problem and there is no rev limiter on your engine. Many guys have removed the entire deal. I suspect that you still have dirt in the carburator specifically in the slow speed jet. This is the one that you can get to from the top of the carburetor so just go ahead and unscrew it. Make sure that the orifices are really clean and replace it. The reduction in power after running at high speed could be one of two things. A partially blocked fuel filter which can't keep up with the fuel demand or a partially blocked air breather which causes a vacumm in the fuel bowl. The breather is the small pipe on the top of the carburetor which should have a 6 inch plastic pipe on it (but yours is probably long gone).
Anyway check these thing out and let us know what transpires.
Dave

Grinds6

As far as the not starting up all the time goes, I replaced the solenoid, and although I haven't driven it much everytime I do now it seems to run.

Haven't messed around with the other stuff yet, but I think I might try to put the governor back on since I dont feel like blowing a motor.

I am going to block off the oil pump and start mixing the gas at 128:1 as it calls for, what is the best thing to do to disconnect/plug it?

Still looking for the arm rests and top with brackets if anyone has any let me know.

Thanks

ScooterMcTavish

Hey Grinds, have fun finding a top - seems to me BrewCityMusic has been looking for a top for a while.

The oil injection is an easy one to remove - just pull off the oil tank, hoses, and pump on the end of the crank, and the extra linkages. On top of the carb there is a banjo bolt with the hose that comes from the pump. Take this bolt out, and replace it with what I believe is an M6 bolt.

Regarding oil injection, I picked up a cart for $200 (as have many other people on this board) due to an oil injector inevitably crapping out. As Dave pointed out, the only way that most people figure out it's not working is when their cart grinds and shudders to a painful halt.

This is what a failed oil injection system looks like:

Grinds6

Ok. I have pulled the tank, hoses, and pump. Put a bolt in the hole on top of the carb. But what do you plug the hole on the crank with?

Could I just pull the hoses and tank and plug all 3 holes? Would that do the same thing?

Dave Box

If you have blocked the orifice on the elbow behind the carburetor you are done. There is no hole in the crank to block.

Dave

Grinds6

So would it be ok to just take off the hoses and plug the holes while leaving the pump bolted to the crank? I was referring to if you take the pump completely off the crank there is a hole where the pump went into the crank. Do I need to put anything in this hole? Or like previously mentioned should I leave the pump bolted to the crank?
Sorry for what may seem like stupid questions but I just wanna make sure I do it right.
Thanks

ScooterMcTavish

Nope, you can take the pump off, and there's no "real" hole to fill - just the slotted crank end that would drive the pump. Don't really need to plug this, and some people (myself included) use a dremel to cut this keyed end off to keep it neat looking.

But yes, you can keep the pump on - most of us take it off because it makes the end of the engine look cleaner.