I agree about getting water to it. Also that you can break things if
you don't understand how they work. These things are a bit of a rube
goldburg with basically the bottom half of an outboard attached to the
end of a car engine and how they are put together is sometimes not what
you would think it would be. For example it needs to be in gear
(forward I think) to remove the outdrive. You do not want to run it
for any time at all without water. The way they work is that the
outdrive gets power all the time and the actual gear
engagement/disengagement is in the bottom of the outdrive right behind
the prop. In the shaft in the ourdrive going down to that area is a
rubber impeller pump that should not be run dry. You should see some
water pickup ports on the sides of the outdrive. That is how they pump
lake water up to cool the engine and exhaust. After the water cools
the engine it gets dumped into the exhaust to cool it. The outdrive
has a lube plug on the side near the top and another down at the
bottom. It is filled with marine 90wt. You really need some muffs and
you can get them at a boat store pretty cheap. It is worrying that it
makes a noise between the engine and the prop. Did you get any
indication from the person that gave it to you that it should work? It
might have shifting problems and you are hearing the gears skipping.
It has no clutches, you just engage the gears when you shift it. Or
one of the gear sets could be shot. As is obvious it has to transfer
the engine spin from horzontal to vertical and then back to horizontal.
There is a rubber coupling on the flywheel where you would expect to
find a clutch in a car. These strip out sometimes and that's another
possibility. A service manual would really help you. The details have
changed a bit but even if you borrow a newer service manual for a merc
alpha from a friend it would give you a general idea of how the thing
works.


Rand_man50 via BoatKB.com wrote:
Ok, I pulled the fuel filter water seperator apart and it had gas coming to
it, and there was also gas getting to the carb, I guess it just took it a
while to get through the lines to the carb. For a while it would start for
about 2 seconds and die, so I tried it with the throttle up a little. It
started like that, so I figured it just wasn't getting enough gas at idle so
I turned up the idle on the carb. Now it runs! It makes a clattery noise that
sounds like its coming from somewhere between the engine and the propellor. I
don't think it's the engine but I dont want to leave it on too long because I
don't have one of those muff things. I also don't know where to look for that
lube plug thing you were talking about. Is that to lubricate the transmission
or something?

I checked out the floor and it seems pretty solid, not too much bounce. I
ripped out all the interior since it had been sitting in somebody's yard for
3 years, and I don't see any sagging spots. Also the hull looks pretty solid.

There seems to be a lot I don't know about boat engines that could get me in
trouble. I don't wan't to get it running and then blow it up. Is there any
web site or something I could check out to make sure I don't screw up too bad?

Thanks a lot for your help so far, I didn't even know where to start.

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