Reply To: Sorry to ask, researching coils for 1954 Evinrude 25hp

[need2fish]

I stocked up on the OMC/Prufrex and Phelon coils about 15 years ago. Having worked as a consultant for Bombardier’s railcar division, I’ve seen how rapacious the company can be — when they cut Johnson down to 2 models, it was clear they were going to back out of the industry — the profit margin was higher elsewhere and it didn’t matter that they put out of work dedicated employees with 30+ years of service.

The Beaudoin-Bombardier family won’t be able to take it with them.

Ok — off the soapbox.

I’ve had mixed results with the Chinese knock-offs. The innards seem to be ok, but sometimes the armature plates and the coil cover need reshaping about 50% of the time. It seems they don’t have access to the original tooling specs and have based their product on a few old coils pulled from a wall-hanger.

My RD-15 & 17 are now in baskets because I got too old to a) pull-start them from a sitting position and b) the motors gained weight and became too heavy to pull out of the rafters. One got away from me as I was taking it down and I grabbed it as it was going down and promptly dislocated a shoulder and tore the rotator cuf.

I go as far as 18-hp these days.