Reply To: 1973 6Hp Evinrude Fisherman hard starting cold

[Don]

OK, well it looks is as if you addressed what would have been my first suggestion, which is the recoil lock out mechanism that limits the throttle setting when cranking, those pieces appear to be gone…
Looks like new coils were installed, did you set the air gap correctly? You will have weak ignition if the coils are set too far in from the flywheel magnets.
It should start easier than four pulls at 3/4 throttle once warmed up also.
“Hollow popping” at mid range usually indicates a lean condition, do you have the carb/ignition sync set correctly? Is the carb butterfly moving easily and closing fully at idle?
Finally, you mention it seems a little weak power wise, are you sure it is running on both cylinders??? These things will run pretty smoothly on one cylinder, but certainly have no power.
You mention the bottom plug looks messy, I was thinking perhaps the fuel pump diaphragm was leaking fuel into the cylinder, but it is plumbed into the top cylinder, so the top plug would be messy if the fuel pump was messed up.. Please DO NOT disassemble this fuel pump to investigate my theory….You could just run the engine with the fuel hose removed and see if the engine picks up once the fuel is out of the inlet hose. Where do you have the idle needle valve set? Initial setting should be 1.5 turns out from gently seated.
I guess next I would pull the plug wires one at a time while running at higher speeds to see if RPM drops equally.
If the sync checks out OK, then perhaps you might want to pop the idle core plug out of the carb to check for debris or a broken needle tip like others have spoke of.