I work on about 40 of these motors annually, and sell them to customers with a 30-day coverage (really more than that) back up. I work on them when they have been swamped, when they are severely moused, when they are completely beat to heck. They are great little motors but a labor of love.
3 things I will say that make them NOT WORTH rehabbing.
1. If the drive shaft is stuck in the crank, don’t bother fixing it unless you have a lot of time, patience, and parts on your rack to replace things.
2. If the compression is below 60-65 using an electric drill gun AFTER running fogging oil through the intake for 30 seconds, the powerhead is cooked. Don’t use the manual starter to measure compression. At the minimum, rope start the motor and test that way. It will take 4-6 rope pulls (wrapped around at least 2.5 times, the more the easier for your shoulder).
3. Don’t try to fix it if it’s badly affected by salt water. If you have to repair anything important, you have to remove around 12 fasteners to split the lower cowel, and although you can drill everything out if necessary, it’s nothing short of a nightmare (not even the right adjective to describe how bad it is) to get at what you want if things are really stuck. I’ve spent, literally, 6 hours getting the lower cowels split apart before just to change out the lower skirt due to exhaust leakage. Umm….a lot of other things I can do with that time…and resale value on one of these motors, 100% correct, isn’t worth 6 hours of my time!
From the way you describe your motor, none of those things really sound that bad. But if it stalls out with the cover on at anything less than 1/2 throttle, get ready to start pulling the whole thing apart, assuming your impeller housing grommet is present and in tact! Also make sure the exhaust relief rubber tube is secured (seen inside motor pan, with the giant hose clamp that is a nightmare to get back on if removed).
I will say that I save these motors for the winter when the season is slow, because I generally put aside 12-20 hours of labor for bad case examples. Normal wear and tear examples are the same time to repair as any other one. I mentally expect it to be a PIA to fix a bad example of these. I guess a #4 point would be if the stern bracket is all beat to heck, because as nifty as the lockdown function in neutral/reverse is, it is also an extremely common feature that has failed after 50 years of existence, which generally presents issues because if the motor is stuck in lock down while in forward, most boaters who don’t realize all you have to do is reach down and pull the lockdown latch out of the way (particularly SAILERS) get pretty upset in a hurry.
They also need to have the shift linkage perfect otherwise they will jump out of gear fairly easily. A 1/8th adjustment is like night and day. And general every day people have no clue how to understand this adjustment.
But remember….
Still love these motors…..