I'm bringing my boat in from Colorado and it's going to need tuned.  It runs a little lean now at 5k feet so it'll need bigger jets.  I'm actually hoping to find a shop that'll give me a good deal to trade this in for a 20hp four stroke.

I'm assuming outboard?

Outboard haven in Verona is your best bet if you are in the Pittsburgh area.

Yep, have you had work done there?

Make and model of said outboard?

I haven't, but know folks who have, and they recommend them.

I have an old 85 hp Suzuki that I'll eventually be taking in for a carburetor job once i get off my butt and get motivated to get my bass boat in the water

2004 Mercury 50hp two stroke ELPTO 3cyl S/N DT865823

Good to hear, thank you! "Bass boat" should be the only motivation you need.

Pfft. I've been working on them for years. We had (had till the 4-strokes took over) 12 in our rental fleet.
How handy are you with simple hand tools? You could re-jet it yourself. If you are really handy you don't even need to remove the carbs as the main jets are accessible behind the brass plugs in the float bowls.
BTW - the serial number will be 0T 865823 and not DT prefix. just an FYI if you need to look up parts.
<---Mercury Marine mechanic.

Thanks for the correction, not sure why I typed DT as I know the tag reads 0T.  I've rejetted two stroke atvs and dirt bikes since I could ride them but didn't want to pull the carbs on this. Since the mains are accessible maybe I'll just do it myself. The hardest part might be finding them locally. Air fuels screws look easy to get to as well.  Are there any tuning guides online to get me close for certain elevations?

There is another issue that had me wanting a shop to look it over. Did Mercury or you guys in the shops ever figure why these are so hard to restart after shutting down for a short period of time on the water? Last week I couldn't get it restarted on the lake and the winds panicked up pretty good. I was not a happy camper. My trolling motor was getting me nowhere at speed 5. Tried changing plugs and cranked the motor over with them out to make sure it wasn't flooded. It restarted after roughly a half hour. When I got home I searched a little on the web it seemed pretty common but all the threads I found were older.

I pulled the caps and looks like .052 jets.  I'll have to see if I can locate some .054 and .056 jets.

Here's a manual I found, KB7DX. Is it GTG for my engine?

Link

Found it here

Manual looks GTG. Check your carburetor number stamped into the side of the carb body. Use the jet chart on page 3B-1 and see if it jives. Carbs are jetted for 1500ft from the factory and have a fairly wide "fudge factor" meaning factory carbs are good from sea level to about 3000 ft. That said, I like my tunes to be a bit on the fat side.
Go through the timing and synchronization procedure if you can. At the very least, take off the air box (silencer) and make sure the throttle plates are all fully closed at idle, and almost  fully open at wide open throttle. I say "almost" because I can't recall any of them getting to WOT on the plates without stressing the linkage.
Hard starts when hot? We saw a lot of that here with the rental fleet. Most of the time the customer had it so badly flooded by the time I got to see it I would raise the warm-up lever all the way up and crank it until it started.
Try this next time, before starting after it's been run and warm, try squeezing the primer bulb to make sure the fuel system is "full". Raise the warm-up lever 1/2 way. Keep you hand on the warm-up lever so when it starts it won't rev way up. If it doesn't start after 5 seconds or so of cranking, bump the "choke" for a second while cranking.

ETA - Whoa Nellie! It just dawned on me that the manual you linked is dated 1998. I'll get our manual tomorrow at work to confirm if that jet chart is correct.

This boat doesn't have a warm up lever that I'm aware of.

What kind of control box does it have, side mount, binnacle or just a control handle? The idea is to open the throttle while the engine is still in neutral gear.

Here's the jet charts.




More info..

Thank you!

Just a single lever mounted on the wall with F/R. I have to engage the drive to throttle up. It never made sense to me but this is my first boat. The only other boats Ive used had a tiller. I'll do some more searching tomorrow and take a pic of the control in case I missed something. The PO showed me to engage the drive so if it has one he didn't know about it either.

There  should  be a way to throttle up without putting it in gear. Some of the control handles have a button in the center of the pivot point. Push in to dis-engage gear shift. Some control handles you actually pull away from the bezel and it dis-engages the shift system.
Can you post a pic of said control handle?

LOL, YUP

There's a button in the center, pushed it in and moved the lever forward then checked the gear box linkage. Boy it hurts the ego when you miss something so simple.