I'm asking for Joe Reeves because of his history at OMC, but I really can use everyones input.<br /><br />I've got a 1988 Johnson 50hp VRO. I purchased this boat/motor combination last fall at a charity auction for donated vehicles. They said it ran, and it does... sort of. The oiler has been completely removed and I'm mixing fresh fuel at 50:1. The engine has good even compression, around 120 psi. If I can get it into gear without it stalling, I can slowly get her up to full throttle and it seems to run well at speed. If I just dump the throttle, the engine dies without any increase in RPM.<br /><br />Now the saga. the main problem seems to be that the spark becomes eratic after it is started so it won't idle reliably. My mechanic(Marine and small engine repair person) has cleaned and rebuilt both carbs, replaced the head gasket, replaced the sheared flywheel key and checked the reed valves. He replaced both coils and the cdi box with no improvement in performance. (old coils and cdi box were reinstalled)<br /><br />That's when he gave up. He had a concern that the pick-up tubes in the carbs had been broken and repaired with solder (I think that that is the way they were manufactured) and that caused him some concern. He also said that while the engine WOULD idle, there are little spits of fuel that fly out of the front of the carbs, something I had noticed as well.<br /><br />I feel the problem is in the ignition system because I could start the engine on one cylinder by disconecting the other spark plug, yet when I reconnected the second plug and disconnected the first, it would only sputter and not start. The problem being that sometimes it would be the opposite cylinder that would fire regularly.<br /><br />Could this be a stator problem? I'm just looking for direction.<br /><br />Thanks for everyone's input.<br />Houseboy
