Mercury classic 50 damaged serial tag

[nwaszc1]

Hello,

I have a boat powered by 4 cylinder 2 stroke Mercury Classic 50 that has a damaged serial number tag. I wanted to replace the water pump and rebuild the fuel pump but am unsure of what kits to purchase on account of the damaged tag. This is my first experience with outboards.

The first 5 characters are intact and read 0A989 with the sixth appearing to possibly be a number 5. After that the tag would appear to have room for 3 additional characters but the charts on iboats and autorepairmanuals.biz show only a max of 7 characters per serial number (see links below, 45HP models).

http://www.iboats.com/Mercury-Water...1265138--session_id.121194669--view_id.271499
http://www.autorepairmanuals.biz/page/609764

The iboats charts show only serials with 7 digits, while the autorepairmanuals.biz charts show serials with 7 digits or ones starting with a letter (an A or a B) followed by six digits.

Not really sure how to read mine since it is 0A989 with possibly 4 characters following that... Do I skip the first 0 in my serial and just look at the letter A and numbers following it? Or were there 7 numbers following the 0A in my serial?

Here's what my serial looks like:


I appreciate any help.

 

[emckelvy]

Looks like your motor might be a 1986 model; the "starting" serial number chart I have shows that in 1986, 50hp serial numbers started at A912478 (I guess the "0" is silent!), and 1987 models started off with serial # B110789. Your "A989___" falls within the range of 1986 models.

There were virtually no changes made to the impeller/housing design on the 4-cyl 44-cube motors, from the mid-60's and up, so you'd be pretty safe to order a pump kit (or just the impeller) for a very-late-model "Classic" 4-cyl.

Far as the fuel pump goes, if they're built-into the carbs it's one type, if you have a single stand-alone pump, the diagrams will show that, too. The picture in the diagram should at least be similar to what you have on your motor.

Note that some 50's use Tillotson carbs and some use Walbro carbs; you should make sure what brand of carbs are in your engine before ordering replacement parts, as there could be some differences.

Here's parts diagrams for a 1986 electric start, long-shaft, motor:

http://www. boats. net/parts/search/Merc/Mercury/1986/1050716/parts.html

(copy & paste to browser address bar, then take the spaces out. This site parses links to other websites).

These diagrams show carbs without fuel pumps, and a separate fuel pump, so if that's your configuration, these would be the correct diagrams.

If those diagrams don't look anything like your motor, post a pic of the motor cowling, showing stripes & colors. That should allow us to narrow down the range of possible years.

HTH..............ed

 

[nwaszc1]

emckelvy, thank you for the help and the link to the resources. That really helps, I am much obliged.