The skeg is broken. To me all the model 4203’s are the same, whether its the first or last, lol. At any rate, Pals are plentiful so finding a replacement lower unit shouldn’t be hard. Exchange the entire lower unit and you probably won’t have to worry about gears. Those gears are mild steel and once they get heavily rust pitted, its debatable an whether they’re still useful or not. For the amount of work that it takes, I suggest completely disassembling the motor, this will allow you to do proper inspections and evaluations and eliminates guess work.
On that particular motor, I guess the defining feature that would cause me to keep it original is how good the gas tank paint & deck-el are. If they are wiped out or unreadable, then you can refinish the thing from head to toe without hurting anything. Unless you want to preserve bent or broken parts and call it “patina”. The tiller handle and grip look pretty good tho, they are worth saving as-is. The grip is likely to be brittle so don’t get too rambunctious about twisting it to try and pull it off the tiller bar. The exhaust pipe can probably be salvaged, but its likely that you can buy a length of new tubing from McMaster-Carr and replace it. Or scam one from the same parts donor motor that you get a lower unit from.
PM T2
He's livin' in his own private Idaho..... I hope to go out quietly in my sleep, like my grand-dad did..... and not screaming, like the passengers in his car...
