dodgy outboard

hello all.a couple of months ago we were bringing the punt out for a spin the engine just came back from a service everything was going fine we came back in and tied up, the engine was ticking over in neutral when all of a sudden there were smoke and flames coming out of the engine ,thankfully we had a small extinguisher and put it out after what seemed like a very long 2 minutes so we took it to the local expert and he has engine going again says it was the carborator packed up and overheated and now says it is as good as ever the engine is a 10 horsepower honda 10 years old and never had trouble off it .my question is would ye trust it after that happened or just look for something else

Hard one to call without seeing some pics. Hard to think that a carb overheated and caused a fire. More like it leaked.... even then Overheating in outboards is normally caused by impeller failure. There is no cooling and then overheating.... If you paid money to have the engine fixed and the engine is running well now, I would suggest you stick with it in the short term at least. Nothing to be lost.

Kev

If you had flames from the carb, was the air silencer present at the front of the carb? If not this can lead to fire in that area due to fuel leaking from bad seats or misaligned floats. Caught soon enough no real damage can occur except to any wiring that's there present around that area and to the cowling. Would be interested to know what the local expert did to the carb as they don't overheat , hope he didn't charge? adn if he did it was only a pint or two.