Almost working, but not quite

[sherwin]

I was finally able to get a mechanic to come out to the boat to look at my Yamaha T9.9 and try to get it running again. He spent over 2 hours trying various things. He noticed a small air leak in my inline filter.
I was afraid to tighten it down too much as I destroyed an earlier one taking it apart to change the filter
element. Raycor's instructions are to only hand tighten the bowl, but this needed a bit more to seal it.
The throtle linkage was sloppy, so he tightened that up to activate the accelerator pump sooner in the
throttle setting. All this, plus lots of cleaning with a carb cleaner combined to get the engine running again.

I was not able to get back to the boat for about two weeks, and when I tried to start the engine, it would
not start. The mechanic had another look at it, and this time the fix was simpler. He simply took off the
cover and worked the throttle linkage with his finger to give it more gas. It started up, and ran fine. I then
waited for the engine to cool down for about an hour and tried restarting. Again, it would not start until I used the mechanics method of giving additional gas, while trying the starter. It could be the electric choke,
but I don't know how to test it. I'm not sure about the choke, since it was 80 degrees today and the engine
was only off for one hour and shouldn't have cooled down that much.

Any ideas?

[sherwin]

Suspect the prime starter

My starting problem on the T9.9 may be due to a failure of the prime starter. What I am reading is that my carb is set to a rich mixture on a cold start. The prime starter will activate after a short time and push on a needle which closes of
this enrichment circuit. What if my prime starter was activated all the time? I guess this could be checked by removing it and seeing if the engine starts better.
This is all conjecture, but I have no other ideas why this engine will only start after goosing the throtle.