hk wrote in
:

Not entirely true. Outboard Marine's predecessor company, ELTO, was
founded by Ole Evinrude, and his son, Ralph,

My first outboard motor was an ELTO. It was part of the Christmas
present given to me by my grandfather and his friends, which included an
old oak rowboat painted State Park Green because one of the friends was
a park maintenance superintendent at the local state park. One of the
other old friends showed up one day with a spiffed up 1hp ELTO outboard
from way, way back that had set up in his garage for decades. He had
disassembled it and fixed anything wrong with it, including a new
little fat spark plug that looked like someone had squashed it end to
end with a brass thumbscrew I was really soon to learn was not to be
touched or gotten anywhere around when it was putting away on my new
boat! As it was right under the gas tank where a finger would surely
touch it as you tried to lift the motor up to get it out of the mud, you
soon learned to shut it down BEFORE reaching back there and finding
yourself on the end of Mr Ole's big magneto!

I have no idea what it's model number was but it had an open flywheel
you wrapped the starting rope around, a water cooled cylinder jacket
that was fed by a little piston pump I suppose ran off some kind of cam
in the foot that had a tiny little pipe sticking out the bottom of the
water jacket and, most amusing to an 8-year-old yacht owner went squirt-
squirt-squirt in time with the pop-pop=pop of the little 2 stroke
engine. A spark lever was marked in front by a little metal strip
around the bottom of the flywheel and there was a throttle lever on the
front of the tiny carb next to the choke lever, I think I remember,
feeding premix 15:1 Quaker State SAE 30 and Grandpa's Tractor Gas into
the crankcase.

Any guesses as to its manufacturing date would be most appreciated.
I've wondered about it for years.

Of course, my mother and grandmother were livid when they found out
saying I'd be dead in a month from drowning in the lake. "How can he
drown?", my grandfather told her. "He's got his floating cushion right
under his behind!" That was all the PFD I ever remember anyone at
Owasco Lake carrying in their boat...a square, dark green, floating boat
cushion. We were fine. I'm still here at 62! I'd been driving
Grandpa's 7.5 Sportwin and 40hp Scott-A****er since I was big enough to
hold onto the tiller or see over the steering wheel of his Penn-Yan
runabout!

ELTOs were fantastic motors. Mine would start if you spun it with your
fingers once you got the spark and throttle pointed to START....(c;

With my 1 gallon premix gas can I could cruise all day with Robb Munn,
my best friend....