1997 Mercury 25hp ES

Motor has been sitting in a closed garage for 6yrs, prior to that was regularly run and dealer maintained each year, though its likely it was stored with full carb of gas.

Replaced fuel line to motor, cleaned tank, cleaned filter under cowl, and cleaned carb/choke/linkages best I could and made sure water discharge was clear of obstruction...

Cranked for about 5 seconds, then the electric start just clicks at the solenoid, bypassing solenoid and test light show fire to starter and starter turns freely by hand, can a starter guy repair this starter or are they throw away? Have already removed it...so wondering if I should just order one or make a trip to town...

Back to trying to start it(before I removed the starter)...using pull rope, got it to start and idle...as soon as I tiller throttle in gear and it goes under a load it dies...but if you ether it just as it gets a load on it and get over that initial hump it would run, I added heavy seafoam to the fuel mixture and under heavy throttle you could hear the rpm get better till it ran perfectly(have others like it), but only if you keep it in gear with a little throttle, if you go to neutral you have to ether it to get it back over the hump, then it will run like a scalded cat, you could hear the carb get clean, now it comes out of the hole as stout and fast as any 25 i've run...but you have to keep enough throttle to keep it moving a little or it would die...

So I have pulled the carb off and disassembled it, the blue plunger diaphragm is toast, finally pushing it down just shattered it it was so dry and brittle, all other dias and gaskets seem fine...the carb didn't seem dirty, but I cleaned it thoroughly...should I just get the dia/gasket kit and replace every thing that comes with it or should I have it rebuilt completely by a pro?

Thanks for any info...

STOP USING ETHER ON IT. The carb can be rebuilt by you get the whole gasket kit and make sure it has the fuel pump and primer diaphragms. Did you try jumping the starter from the battery with jumper cables. You need to clean all the electrical connections to it a bod connection will do the same thing. Did you jump the starter straight from the battery.

If you can strip down the carb - and it sounds like you can, just pick up a kit from Merc. Off the top of my head I don't remember if they have various kits (some just gaskets, others with fuel pump parts and total kit including float) - if you have a choice just get the one you need, although after sitting it probably wouldn't hurt to change the fuel pump diaphragm as well.

A Seloc's manual wouldn't hurt either. There is a little spring/ball bearing that goes in that contraption they pass off as a primer. If you get that jiggered up on re-assembly (and you can't tell often), it will run like crap and have you chasing your tail. Seloc's will walk you quite well through the rebuild/replacement.

If you have someone local who can rebuild the starter for you I would try that route. These are not cheap, even the aftermarket ones - a rebuild will generally cost you less than half of a new one.

The 25 Merc is a pretty awesome motor - certainly well worth the cost of a "rehab" to get her going again.

The aftermarket kit from sierra has everything you need and is 1/2 the price of the merc kit and is available on this website. I would highly recommend the whole kit as the carb is kind of a pain to get off. So do it right the first time and it will save you headaches in the future. Also a water pump kit.