Way2slow

Well, if it's low in fluid again, might be time to find and fix the leak. If the pump is running, and it's just the motor is not moving, I would do a little trouble shooting before just installing a new pump, lots of other things can cause problems. Even if the motor does not run, you need to check the relays and electrical side first.

It sure would be nice is people posted fact and not what they think they know. Maybe if you read this article from Boat US it will help you with some of your facts. http://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2012/april/EthanolAndOlderEngines.asp Also, be sure to take note of this sentence in it. Since 1984, all hoses approved for marine use in gas engines have had to be built to this standard and hoses marked “SAE J1527” are capable of withstanding ethanol blends. Granted, they all didn't convert immediately to J1527 hoses and there was some learning curve with gaskets etc, but by the early to mid 90's, most all had it worked out. Those orange flakes/bits in the fuel line are most likely not the fuel line breaking down, it's where the gas has been left sitting in the fuel lines and broke down from age, leaving that varnish film gasoline will leave. The ethanol dissolves that stuff in the tanks and fuel lines and makes it look like the fuel line is coming apart. Ethanol normally dries the fuel lines out and makes them extremely brittle where they crack and break or can turn them to mush, making the hoses soft and gummy. By the way, I have about a 1/2 dozen power packs that caused similar problems that apparently couldn't not have possibly been bad, but for some strange reason, replacing them fixed the problem.

No, look at the coils and you will see the spark plug wire and a smaller wire connected to it. Follow that smaller wire to the box it's coming out of, that's the ECU/power pack, and yes the are not cheap. The problem is, it's not something you just want to replace without going through all the proper trouble shooting first, and that's not something you can do yourself. The other bad part, the only way to really test it is to replace it.

Hard to say, could have been a fuel delivery problem, fuel pump, anti-siphon valve in tank sticking, water in the fuel, etc. Several things along that line can cause similar problem. Then it could have been trying to go into limp home mode, if that motor has one. Not sure exactly when OMC added that and what models have it. When it goes into limp home, the ECU will not let the motor turn more than 2,000 rpm. This can be cause by an oil sensor if the VRO is still connected, or temp sensor. Then there is the ECU itself. Those random/intermittent problems are the worst of all to try and fix. Motors are pretty easy to trouble shoot when it's broke, but when it screws up, then goes back to working normal, it's hard to fix/find what's broke when it's running perfect. I even had a vent hose from the tank to the filler cause one to start surging like that. Took me a while to find that one. The hose had a large bow in it from the filler to the tank and gas would get in it and it would act like a P-trap on a drain, and wouldn't let the tank get air.

I run Exxon, Chevron, and BP. Those are the three top tier gasoline's most prevalent in my neck of the woods and the only ones I carry cards for. Since I will only run top tier gasoline, which is far more important than whether it has a little ethanol or not, since most motors made in the past 20 years are pretty much designed to run up to 10% ethanol I don't even look to see if they are ethanol free or not, since most are not. I have eight running motors, a 96 4hp Merc, a 76 9.9 Johnson, a 82 25hp merc, 90 28hp Johnson, 88 115hp merc, two modified 325hp Johnsons, and a 1999 225 Evinrude ficht which all have been upgraded to ethanol resistant fuel lines and some of the gaskets in the older motors, and I have never had any problems associated with ethanol gasoline with any of them. I do keep a mild dose of SeaFoam in the fuel but other than that, I don't do anything out of my way because of ethanol gasoline. Granted, there are some problems it can and will cause if the motor does not have the ethanol resistant fuel lines and gaskets but for the most part, ethanol is like oil injections, they get blamed for a whole bunch of failures that they had nothing to do with.

If you are limited to 20hp, stick with a boat that has a fairly wide, flat bottom, and try to stay as light as you can on hull weight. Wider, flat bottom boats, while not as fast on the high end, get on plane a whole lot easier and ride higher in the water at low speeds, which is what you would want. Another trick a lot of people do that helps some is to get the similar size motor, with more HP, like a 30, and replace the decals with 20 HP decals. However, this only works in states that don't do inspections and check serial numbers. There are a couple of states that are very anal about their HP limits and do actually run the motors SN during random spot checks, especially if the boat looks like it's moving a lot faster than it should be able to.

One word of caution, unless it's on a Dino, in a tank with a test prop or pushing a boat down the lake, NEVER!!!!!!! turn a motor over about 2,000 rpm.

Your not wrong, that's where it should be. It's also on a round aluminum disc on the power head if the sticker has come off the engine mount.

Unless you pay some big bucks and get a Lithium, which would also require a special charger, AGM's are about as light as they come, and AGM's are not inexpensive. Here's Deka's spec sheet on their AGM deep cycle http://www.eastpennmanufacturing.com/wp-content/uploads/Intimidator-Deep-Cycle-Flyer-1740.pdf If you compare them, you will see as you go down from a group 24, each one cuts Ah/reserve minutes a bunch, but are considerably lighter, I would have doubts the U1 would give you enough power to even run two hours on minimum speed.

The front badge on that motor is approx. 1970 or 71, but as mentioned, it has been re decaled somewhere along the way. The lettering and stripe are post 1979, I don't think mercury went to the block lettering until around 1980 and I think the small motors with the red stripe would have been around 1985, but the lettering and stripe don't match the year model of the front badge.. So, as I mentioned, to find out for sure, you will need to find the serial number on the power head or motor mount.

here's a 69 7.5

Personally, the MotorGuide. I bought and fought with a Terrova US/iPilot 80 for about three years and it was not for me. Finally, after the $150 foot control went out, it gave me a reason to take it off and put my old MotorGuide back on. I didn't care for having to stop fishing every time just so I could use the remote to maneuver the boat after the foot control went out. So, now it's piled in the corner of the shed with the other 1/2 dozen old TM's. My major complaint to the Terrova was it was a pain in the rectum to stow and deploy. Most of the times I go fishing since my dad died, I end up having to take some family member that barely knows how to cast and not accurate worth a darn, so I make a lot of trips into very shallow water retrieving lures and that motor totally sucks when you have to do that. I had gotten where I would not even fish shallow banks when I had them with me, just to keep from having to chase lures.

I would say around 1970 plus or minus no more than a couple of years. The serial number is the only way to tell for sure. If it's not on the engine mount, look on both sides good, then look on the power head. There should be a round disc plug or something on it that has the serial number stamped in it. For trading and pricing purposes, I would go with it being a 1969 or 1970.

Yea, looks like my crystal ball was working pretty good on that one.

If its the control until, with the forward/reverse lever in it also, When you price one, even a used one, you will probably change your mind and decide you might just want to tighten up the switch in that one and make what ever repairs are necessary. As for different models, you have to make sure the replacement has the same color connector that goes into the motor. There are at least two different models, and I don't remember when they made the change. They may have also changed again in recent years. I think the one you need has the red connector. Also watch out for some of the late 70's unit. OMC made a hydraulic assist lower unit for a couple of years that shifter backwards for all their other unit, and the control box off that motor only works on that lower unit. After you get you jaw off the floor when they tell you the price of a new one and you get one, it should have the switch and keys in it. A used one may or may not have the keys, but if you have the letter/number off the key, the dealer has replacement keys. The switches are not that expensive for one if you need to replace the switch, but it doesn't take much just to tighten one up if it's just loose. Just be aware, there are several different type, so make sure you get one with the same terminals on the back as yours. If it does not have the shifter in it and just mounts in the console, they call those helm key switch units and are cheaper.

If it's only making the noise when it's in gear, then that comes pretty close to saying the problem is in the Lower unit. If it's making the noise all the time, not being able to hear where it's coming from myself, and if you can't, You might want to look at pulling the lower unit off and starting it up without it. If the noise is still there, then you know it's something in the powerhead, if it's gone then it's probably the lower unit. You can run one for 20-30 seconds or so like that, but no more without giving it a long time to cool. The drive shaft can transmit noise from the lower unit up to the powerhead and make it sound like the powerhead has a noise.

What are you talking about, I've been boating for over 50 years and I've never run out of gas, and I've never left the drain plug out. I had a guy tell me that one day when I tried to help him get his motor started at the dock before heading out. It acted like it wanted to start but would only hit for a few seconds. I asked him if he had checked his gas, that is sounded like it was not getting gas. That's when a laid that line on me. I told him "well, I believe you have now" and went on fishing.

I've seen a number of the back bay fishermen in south Texas using them. A lot of these guys wade fish and they have their remote control TM and the remote control power poles so their boat can follow them around while they are fishing. Plant the Power Pole wade for a distance, use the remote to raise the power pole, and then the remote for the TM to bring the boat closer to them or where they are heading to, and plant the power pole again to keep it there until they want to move it again.

Marvel Mystery Oil is suppose to work good in a crankcase to help free sticking lifters, valves etc, but I can't remember ever having used. Not too sure how it would work as a gasoline additive where it is being burnt in and engine. In a two stroke, you want something that's going to help remove carbon deposits in the combustion chamber, don't know if MMO would do that, or actually increase the amount of deposits. I have gone through cases upon cases of SeaFoam and has always been my go to product. It will flush a crankcase and clean lifter if needed. It will stabilize gasoline and it will help remove carbon inside two stroke engines. I've always figured, if it ain't broke, don't need to fix it and SeaFoam has always worked for me.

That's part of the additional mods I was referring to, but that system alone, just stuck on a stock motor will give you a few more hp but not much bang for the bucks. You will also need to do and ECM change and a few other changes. Like I said, fairly expensive upgrade when you have to pay someone like JSRE to do the porting it will need.

It would be easier and cheaper to trade up to more HP. If your motor is the 2.4 I would not mess with it. The 2.5 is the better motor to modify, but there is not much you can do unless you plan on tearing it down and have the ports remapped. This would have to be done by a person that has the tools and know how or you will end up with a piece of junk for a power head. After having it remapped, there are a number of other mods that need to be done to go along with that to get the full benefit. After doing this, you still face that old rob Peter to pay Paul syndrome. To gain top end hp for more speed, you will give up hole shot, especially if you want to get 250 hp or more from it. With the mercs, more hp means turning it more rpm, more rpm means shorter ring life. That can be as little as every 100 hours having to tear it down. Find you a 3.0 225 or 250 and swap out motors if you want to stay with a merc, or get one of the newer 3.3s or 3.4s in another makes. On a heavy bass boat, it's hard to beat having those extra CCs. By the way if you really think you want to go that route, the best source of information on modifying mercs. Is Scream and Fly.com,

Yep, you can always raise a long shaft up when fishing shallow, but when you have the head a foot or more in the air, the first time you smack it with your favorite rod and it converts it from one piece to a two piece, you will regret it.

Well, I don't run either. For my style of fishing and the lakes I mostly fish, Power Poles would be a fancy, useless add on. None of the lake I fish a clear enough to sight fish more than a foot or so deep. Hydraulic jack plates help a lot of some hulls, and do very little others. Lighter hulls that you can run your prop semi surfaced on benefit from dropping the motor to get on plane. Heavier boats, can see very little benefit, other than being to lazy to spend the time tuning everything the first time. My boat is fast and fairly heavy, to get good bow lift, I have to run my motor about 4 1/2" down on a fixed 10" jack plate. Having a hydraulic jack plate on it would do nothing, since I have already had a prop tuned for it, blue printed the hull, and found the best offset and engine height the old fashion way. The main benefits of having a hydraulic plate is it lets you lower the motor for better bite on the hole shot, or raise it way up when moving around in shallow water, which I don't use my gas motor for that, $800 props don't appreciate it sometimes. On some boats, when you have high rake, high cupped prop running shallow for max speed, the hole shot can suffer sometimes. Being able to drop the motor helps on that. If you are not planning on playing with different props and then having the one that works best professionally tuned to for peak performance, You might not see much bang for your buck with a hydraulic jack plate.

As mentioned, a mid to late 80's 115 is basically the old 140. If you look and that 115 has the same bubble back exhaust chest (looks like it has an oil pan on it), it's the down rated 140 , if it has the flat back exhaust chest, it's the early 115 and will make a considerable difference in power, they became the 88-90hp. There will also be some performance loss because they dropped the compression from about 120psi to about 90psi so it could still run the lower grades of gas the government went to, but most of the difference in hp rating is because of the going from rating it off the crankshaft to rating it off the prop shaft. With almost any motor made before the early-mid 80's, you can automatically take about 15% off the horse power number if comparing it to a later motor. Not all models or manufactures made the change at the same time but pretty much all of them had made the change by 1985, but there were some that did it as early as 82. That 150 Merc tower of power, became their 115 tower of power when Merc made the change to rating off the prop shaft and dropped the compression on it for the junk gas being produced. I will say, be dang sure you do compression checks on those motors, those old motors lost compression pretty quickly if they did not have a high grade oil run in them, were not well maintained and decarbed regularly.

If you are not fishing areas where you get a lot of boat traffic where you are fighting wakes, or heavy wind where you are fighting white caps, or do a lot of shallow water fishing, I would stick with the 45". When you are in shallow water, that extra length will probably get in the way if you raise the motor to keep it dragging bottom as much when shallow. However, if boat traffic or white caps is a problem, that extra length helps keep in from popping out of the water when the wakes hit.