The Motor

Here is the Johnson 35 HP outboard that I got with the boat.  It is a 1979 Johnson 35E79A, not the original motor, but nonetheless a good motor if it runs.  One concern I have is that the ID plate is missing from the mounting bracket, and it hasn't been run recently.

Here is the setup I used for testing the motor.  We tried the pull cord, but it was way too stiff.  Hooked a battery up to the solenoid's battery input, and used a jumper wire to activate the solenoid.  Borrowed my neighbor's portable fuel tank with primer bulb and some 32:1 (normally 50:1 for this motor).  Before we tried starting it, we took off the carburetor cover and discovered a bunch of strange dead little black beetle-looking bugs inside the choke flap and chamber in there.  Picked them all out so they don't clog anything. 

After a few tries with spraying starter fluid and recharging the battery, it actually started and ran pretty well!  Definitely needs some work, my friend is going to remove and take apart/clean out the carburetor, going to clean it all up under the cover, eventually paint it and new decals, new wiring and fuel hoses, controls, etc.  Overall, pretty happy that it ran and even the water pump seemed to be working, but I'll replace the impeller.

Took out the carb, cleaned the exterior thoroughly.  Got a rebuilding kit and giving it to a friend to go through the carb for me.

I thought the motor was basically fine except for needing some cosmetics and new hoses, but it turned out to need MUCH more than that.  As I took things apart so it could be cleaned and painted, I found many, many broken/cracked/frozen/corroded parts.  I also went to remove all the motor covers and the head so that I could replace all the gaskets, and discovered that one of the cylinders had an unrepairable crack in it.  

Luckily, I found an identical long block on Ebay for cheap, a freshwater-only motor with reasonable compression.  I bought that block, which was in better shape than mine, and took it apart (except for the pistons and crankshaft, they seemed okay and were left intact).  I had the block and cylinder head resurfaced to help improve the compression, and put all the covers back on with new gaskets.  I reassembled and cleaned the block, with the rest of the outboard fully disassembled, so that everything could be cleaned and painted before reassembly with new parts and hardware where needed.

Over the course of the winter and spring of 2016 I had to buy many new parts for this motor.  Coils, wiring, hoses, diodes, terminal block, powerpack, stator (used), low idle needle, and many more.  Figured out that the motor was converted at some point from manual start to support electric start as well, but never added some of the parts that were needed for doing electric start properly in terms of battery charging.   

Finally in mid-May 2016 I went to test out the motor on a stand.  It did start, but popped and banged and wouldn't run.  Figured out that the timing was off 180 degrees, and all I had to do was swap the spark plug wires.  Then it did start and run, but kept flooding and stalling.  Replaced the low-idle needle and put in a new float and float valve in the carburetor, and got it to run great on the stand.  Pumped out water well, ran smoothly for over 20 minutes, never got too hot.  Forward and reverse gears worked.  Still needs a little adjustment with the throttle and timing adjustment at higher speed, but a lot of hard work and learning curve finally paid off.