Question about Mercury 1960's Inline 4 and V6 ignition systems

sutor623

Rear Admiral
Joined
May 23, 2011
Messages
4,087
Hey guys been workin on this 1967 Merc 650 for a while now, and shes doing great. She has stranded me in the water before, so I want to make sure that I have done as much a possible to limit my chances of this happening again.

So, the only "system" that I have not fully restored at this point is the ignition system. I did clean up cap and rotor, changed wires and plugs. There is a main driver coil outside of the distributor, and then there are two smaller coils in the distributor itself. In the distributor, I believe one coil is low speed and one is high. My question is this, if one of these three coils were to fail, would it start off as an intermittent problem, or would it one day leave me "dead on the water"?
 

Faztbullet

Supreme Mariner
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
15,589
Re: Question about Mercury 1960's Inline 4 and V6 ignition systems

In my 40+years of repairing Merc's, I have only replaced coils in that style ignition (650 & 50 hp) only a couple of times, have replaced several of the ignition switchboxes but these failed due to wiring problems and incorrect troubleshooting and several coils due to cracking. This is a very reliable system....
 

sutor623

Rear Admiral
Joined
May 23, 2011
Messages
4,087
Re: Question about Mercury 1960's Inline 4 and V6 ignition systems

Thanks Fazt, I didnt realize I got a reply on this. I ended up having to rewind a stator, but other than that, the ignition system is great!
 
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