Was going to go out this afternoon, got everything ready, put boat in the water and my engine would not start. It only has 36 hours on it and an electric fuel pump located above the tank in the front of the boat. Well, I decided not to risk it and took the boat home then checked to see if I had spark and if my spark plugs were fouled and everything was ok. After this I pretty much knew I had a fuel issue so I disconnected the fuel line going to the motor, turned to fuel pump on and noticed that no fuel came out for about 5 seconds then the pump started working. Then I put everything back together and the motor started right up. To the best of my knowledge, the fuel line had some air in it and it wasn't letting the engine prime itself but I'm not entirely sure.

I was 70 degrees here today and the engine wasn't vapor locked because I would've been able to see the bubbles going through the fuel filter if it was. The only thing I'm thinking is that I didn't let the pump run for a few seconds like I always do before cranking the motor but the engine still ran for about 30 seconds before cutting off which would have been more than enough time for the pump to prime itself. So any ideas on what could've caused this?

One more thing, do you guys think that the inline fuel filter before my carbs are needed? I have a 70 micron filter before my fuel pump with the line going into a 25 micron fuel water separator so I don't think that the small filter on there now is doing much except letting me know the engine is getting fuel.

Had this happen to me, motor sat up for a couple of weeks i guess and went to fire it up and it was a no go, disconnected the fuel hose from the motor flipped the switch, pump caught prime and away we went! No big deal!

Thanks, I ran it this morning for about two hours and everything went fine. I didn't even put any fuel in the tank and ran it until almost empty to see if the fuel pump would have a problem pulling fuel from an almost empty tank, but it ran great. The weird thing is that I ran the engine in my house the night before and it was perfect.