Hey guys, new member here, so take it easy on me! 
Looks like a lot of good information as well as some good guys on here.
I've got an old 85 Skeeter SF115 with an 85 120 Johnson (J120TLCO). I screwed up when I bought this boat, taking the guy's word that it ran fine but had sat for a couple of years and he had no muffs, plus there were no batteries in it. Long story short, it runs like a one-legged chicken!
The problems are it has an exhaust pop and quiver at idle, plus a mid-range misfire that, if it was a four stroke, I would swear was a bad plug wire. Top end is great and the boat will run 55+.
Compression runs 105-110 on all four cylinders, the carbs have been cleaned and rebuilt, and it has new plug wires and a new powerpack. Both I and the mechanic I've had working on it have found several things wrong with it from an apparent previous rebuild, including a pinched fuel line to the bottom carb, incorrectly installed plug wire (terminal pulled back in the boot instead of connected to the coil), burned plug wire, etc. but none of it has made a real big difference.
The VRO has been disconnected and the fuel is mixed at a 50:1 ratio and I regularly run StaBil and Sea Foam in it.
Oh yeah, another thing that I've noticed is that I can pull the trigger wire on each coil and it makes very little difference except for the top right cylinder and it will almost kill the motor. Another thing is, the regulator wires connect to the terminal block are (I think) all supposed to be color matched ie: both gray wires on one screw, both yellow on one, etc. but mine is wired with the gray wire off the regulator going to a screw by itself (doing nothing), and the mating gray attached to the screw with the two yellow wires. When I switch them around like I think they should be, the sound of the motor changes, but it gets hard to start and once started, it lacks power to the point of dying when you put it in gear.
This leads me to think that it's all electrical related, but I don't have a wiring diagram to go off of.
Any ideas?
Looks like a lot of good information as well as some good guys on here.I've got an old 85 Skeeter SF115 with an 85 120 Johnson (J120TLCO). I screwed up when I bought this boat, taking the guy's word that it ran fine but had sat for a couple of years and he had no muffs, plus there were no batteries in it. Long story short, it runs like a one-legged chicken!
The problems are it has an exhaust pop and quiver at idle, plus a mid-range misfire that, if it was a four stroke, I would swear was a bad plug wire. Top end is great and the boat will run 55+.
Compression runs 105-110 on all four cylinders, the carbs have been cleaned and rebuilt, and it has new plug wires and a new powerpack. Both I and the mechanic I've had working on it have found several things wrong with it from an apparent previous rebuild, including a pinched fuel line to the bottom carb, incorrectly installed plug wire (terminal pulled back in the boot instead of connected to the coil), burned plug wire, etc. but none of it has made a real big difference.
The VRO has been disconnected and the fuel is mixed at a 50:1 ratio and I regularly run StaBil and Sea Foam in it.
Oh yeah, another thing that I've noticed is that I can pull the trigger wire on each coil and it makes very little difference except for the top right cylinder and it will almost kill the motor. Another thing is, the regulator wires connect to the terminal block are (I think) all supposed to be color matched ie: both gray wires on one screw, both yellow on one, etc. but mine is wired with the gray wire off the regulator going to a screw by itself (doing nothing), and the mating gray attached to the screw with the two yellow wires. When I switch them around like I think they should be, the sound of the motor changes, but it gets hard to start and once started, it lacks power to the point of dying when you put it in gear.
This leads me to think that it's all electrical related, but I don't have a wiring diagram to go off of.
Any ideas?
