01-03-2005, 09:18 PM
My friend and I are trying to fix a 1952 Johnson 3HP Seahorse two-stroke outboard.
It hasn't been running in easily twenty years.
Anyway, we gassed it up, sprayed some fogging oil into the cylinders, and then cranked. And cranked and cranked and cranked.
So we pulled a sparkplug and grounded it properly (with the outer electrode on the metal of the engine), turned off the light and cranked. No spark! And the air that the piston was pushing out with it's spark plug removed smelled like gas, so that seems to be alright. So it's a problem with the spark, right?
Well, that's what we figured, so the next step is to replace the plugs and wires. Replacing the plugs is easy, but the wires is another story, it seems. They lead from the spark plugs to deep underneath the flywheel. So we decided to remove the flywheel to get at the wires. That's harder than it sounds. We (with much difficulty) got the flywheel nut off and tried lifting the flywheel right off. No luck, it seems stuck on something. We knocked, we pried, and it still wouldn't come off.
So that leads to two questions:
a) is the replacement of the plug wires actually necessary? Could the wires prevent it from getting spark? Or should we just replace the plugs?
b) if we DO replace the plug wires, then how the heck do we get the flywheel off? Or is there another way to replace the wires?
And one other little unrelated question:
When you move the speed bar on the motor, it also rotates the whole coil/contact points assembly. Why is that? Is it some sort of manual spark advance mechanism?
It hasn't been running in easily twenty years.
Anyway, we gassed it up, sprayed some fogging oil into the cylinders, and then cranked. And cranked and cranked and cranked.
So we pulled a sparkplug and grounded it properly (with the outer electrode on the metal of the engine), turned off the light and cranked. No spark! And the air that the piston was pushing out with it's spark plug removed smelled like gas, so that seems to be alright. So it's a problem with the spark, right?
Well, that's what we figured, so the next step is to replace the plugs and wires. Replacing the plugs is easy, but the wires is another story, it seems. They lead from the spark plugs to deep underneath the flywheel. So we decided to remove the flywheel to get at the wires. That's harder than it sounds. We (with much difficulty) got the flywheel nut off and tried lifting the flywheel right off. No luck, it seems stuck on something. We knocked, we pried, and it still wouldn't come off.
So that leads to two questions:
a) is the replacement of the plug wires actually necessary? Could the wires prevent it from getting spark? Or should we just replace the plugs?
b) if we DO replace the plug wires, then how the heck do we get the flywheel off? Or is there another way to replace the wires?
And one other little unrelated question:
When you move the speed bar on the motor, it also rotates the whole coil/contact points assembly. Why is that? Is it some sort of manual spark advance mechanism?
f only life let you press CTRL-Z.
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Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.
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Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.