Home › Forum › Ask A Member › 1st of many questions Merk KF7 › Re: 1st of many questions Merk KF7
The KF7 is a great-running, fun-to-run engine; and for a Mercury, it is fairly straight forward. The Bendix is not my favorite mag but it will work. Coils are usually bad. Even new coils will only hope to put out a 1/4" spark. Sometimes they will work better with a reduced spark plug gap. Just about any condenser will fit. I used 3.0 liter Mercruiser condensers with the wire lengthened, because I had lots of good used ones on hand. The Bendix magnetic rotor will be found to be pretty darn tight on the crankshaft. Unless doing a total restoration, I wouldn’t worry about the upper crank seal too much, just yet. The lower ones take more of a beating; so you may want to assume THAT one is bad. Gear case/water pump cover is left hand thread. Everybody complains about this but if you think about it, it makes total sense. If they were right hand, the impeller would tend to back the cover off when running. They are thirsty engines, for not being built with a fuel pump; so the filter in the tank and the copper line must be in very good condition, or she’ll fall on her face, at speed. I personally find it’s easier to just make a new copper line, than to clean it. Carbs are simple as pie to clean. While I have never seen a 20 cube Mercury engine where the rings were NOT at least a bit stuck, people get them running all the time without getting into the block and pistons deal. Maybe some Sea Foam or Ring Free would be a good idea.
Long live American manufacturing!