slugging 1988 evinrude xp200

I have an 88 evinrude xp200 looper i've had a lot of problems with this engine
it will start rather quickly and idle out of the water with a water muffler as soon as i'm at the lake and the foot is fully submerged it will not stay started
i have to give it more throttle just to keep it running then once i'm past the no wake marker and hit the throttle it will not get on plane quickly once it does however there seems be no power i'm lucky if i hit 40mph when it was running i was hitting 70 mph easy. it sounds as it the motor is not hit on all
cylinders i've had a compression check at 2 places one said motor was gone
and quickly tried to sell me an $18,000.00 engine the other said it was just
the power pack replaced it and it still runs bad. i'm weighing all my options before i make a big financial commitment or financial mistake. any help suggestion would be great

Re: slugging 1988 evinrude xp200

rent borrow or buy a compression tester and test yourself, check spark, actually sounds like a carboration/fuel delivery problem, link and sinc. when on muffs it has no load, or exhaust back pressure. thus if you set idle rpm's on muffs, idle is set too low for in the water. idle must be set in the water and in gear. do the compression and spark check and post the results.

Re: slugging 1988 evinrude xp200

ran the compression test it was at about 80 on all 6 don't know for sure if this ok, but hey the motor is almost 20 yrs old. I guess next option is to take it in to have the carbs clean unless there is something i can put in the fuel to help clean it. once again any info is appreciated