1964 (?) johnson 40hp cooling question...

I recently bought an old super seahorse 40hp as a "parts motor", but immediately noticed that it wasn't locked up and had good compression, so I replaced the fuel lines, cleaned the carb, checked the points; and got it to fire. After she turned over, I replaced the impeller and got her to run for about 30 seconds, but shut her off after I didn't see water coming out of the pee hole (or what looked like a pee hole). The motor felt like it was indeed cooling, and I pulled the lower unit off again and this time hooked a hose up directly to the copper pipes where they would normally couple to the water pump housing. The water seemed to be passing through the motor just fine, but again, only exhaust was coming out of the pee hole... So my question is: is this normal? And if not, what are the potential causes of this? I am much more familiar with the old omc twins in the 18-20-25 hp range, and if this were those I would blame the gasket just below the powerhead; but this is the first 40 I've worked on, and I wanted to ask folks familiar with this motor before I start tearing into this old motor....
Thanks!

Re: 1964 (?) johnson 40hp cooling question...

Pull off the thermostat cover and remove thermostat, plastic housing deal, spring and ball. Replace cover and run. Should pump lots of water out now. Put thermostat in pan of water and heat up. It should open before boiling. Replace everything and you should be good. Mine ('65) barely sprays water out with everything in place, but cools correctly.

Re: 1964 (?) johnson 40hp cooling question...

Thermostat may not have opened, 30 seconds isn't very long. At the same time, did you have the water level deep enough in the barrel to allow the pump to start working?

Re: 1964 (?) johnson 40hp cooling question...

kbait said:

Mine ('65) barely sprays water out with everything in place, but cools correctly.

Click to expand...

This is the answer to my question. Before my original post, I had already replaced the impeller and removed the old thermostat (a new one is on order at napa); the fact that it was only throwing only a little bit of water mixed with lots of exhaust out of that big friggin port is what had me scratchin my head... I'm used to old johnson-rudes from 25hp down to 5 1/2... And the GUSH when they're workin right, so that teeny trickle made me worry a bit, but it did seem to be cooling alright. Thanks!