I just bought a boat that came with a free 1978 Mercury 402 40hp 2-cylinder 2-stroke motor. (Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.) Anyway, I got a manual, played around with it a bit, and found that there was zero compression on the top cylinder.<br /><br />I removed the cylinder cover and found that on the top cylinder, next to the hole for the spark plug, there's a tiny 2 or 3 millimeter hole burned through to the inside. On the cylinder cover, there's a little piece of protruding metal that's burned from fire escaping this hole.<br /><br />If I put my fingers over the small hole and the sparkplug hole and turn the flywheel, I can feel compression in the cylinder.<br /><br />To me, it looks like this thing burned through intentionally to prevent something worse happening. If that's the case, what was it preventing, and is it repairable?<br /><br />Also, who votes I drill the hole out, thread it, put a screw in, and forget about it? (If anyone thinks that's going to make the engine explode in a hail of shrapnel, please let me know, because I'm seriously going to consider this if the only alternative is to get a whole new block.)<br /><br />