Reply To: ‘79 Johnson 25 hp

[Geer Pyron]

I’ve reread all the replies a few times now. I have a plan.
But to answer a few questions, I do not have a neon in line spark tester, but will order one right after Christmas. But I do have a nifty little squirt bottle that I use. It sure beats doing the Mad Max Fury Road war boys tactic!
I run my bigger motors, over 10 hp, on a 16’ 1973 Loweline. Sometimes with Hank, mostly just me gas and small tool box. No dog. The boat is a good running boat. A Scott Atwater 7.5 hp planes it! It books with my ‘04 merc 25.
I’ve put a different prop on the motor in question. I got the motor recently for very little. It came with a 10 1/4” x 11 prop. I only thought about the prop when I happened to notice how little clearance there was between blade and water pick up.
I jacked a 9 1/4” x 11 from another motor.
And yes, it idles good as far as I can tell and lacks power at wot. Weather it is dropping a cylinder or not is beyond my expertise. I simply can’t tell. That’s why I hooked the tach up. But that was dumb because I never ran it wot with the tach hooked up.
I’m going to put intake manifold back together and focus on the electrical aspect. Hanks words are ringing in my ears, “Whaaaaaa???? You didn’t get new plugs??? They are 3 bucks!!!”
A lot, if not all, of the ground connections have been re done by me. Just in the course of taking things apart and putting them back together.
But I’ll check everything that has been suggested, plug booties back To the mag.
And dispite really wanting to use the tachometer and buy one(or two) for every motor I have, I’m going to back away. I can still see Mr. Woods cocking his head, touching the top of a running motor and saying, “Oh, you put new rings in it. That noise will go away by the time we get back to the dock” It did. And I had said nothing about putting new rings in, which I had.
It’ll be a few days till I can get back to it but I’ll keep y’all posted.
I hope it all works out. I’ve already found a guy who will keep it at his lake house on a boat and let me use it, and fix it, whenever I want!
Thank you all for the input.
G

JMGP