Both the Marine Engine site and Mercury’s dealer site say that gasket is the right one for your engine. I don’t know what is going on. Could it be the serial between the bracket and power head have been mis-matched over the years?
I don’t know exactly how Mercury built those stop switches, so my idea to repair the wires may not work….But…..I recently worked on an OMC 18 hp with the same problem: bad wires to the stop switch. I found that the wires were crimped into the switch contacts. I was able to carefully press out the contacts, cut the wire off the contacts, then carefully drill the remaining strands out of the contacts. I cut some new wire, inserted it into the contacts, re-crimped them, and fed the wire and contacts back into the switch. You can’t tell it from OEM, now and it works good. Hope that helps YOU….
Long live American manufacturing!
