Re: Older Mercury Outboard Manuals? (1986)
I've had very little success with older manuals. You will see different sites offering manuals copied onto CDs or online for a few dollars but I find those to money traps as the quality in many cases is crap, especially if the are copies of Clymer or Seloc.
The later Mercury online manuals are excellent and to me they only prove that you should have an manual produced by the manufacturer.
If you let us know what engine you are looking for, I can find the manual p/n for you and you can look online for it as many come up on ebay etc. or simply purchase a new one.
In the end, the original manual will still be your best investment.
Gerry