buying a 150, need advise

ok, so I want to trade in my '78 johnson 75hp , and get a mercury 150, CANT WAIT FOR THAT

Now, I found 2 mercs 150 and since here in my country everything above 25hp is rare, finding 100+ models is a lottery, so one of these 2 will be the final choice, now the 2 are:

1) 1994 150 black max , the motor is on a boat so we will give it a spin, any special thing to check on these things ?

2) 1997 150 efi, I have a few issues with this one: it has been sitting for 2 years so don't know if that can cause issues, the guy sold the boat, so we can only check it on land, and do a muff test, and finally I got a small heart attack today when I saw the ECU price is 1500 , how prone are these things to failure ?

also any general advice on what to look out for on these 2, and any other tips and expirience for them would help a lot

oh, yes, and does anybody have some numbers on there fuel consumption ?

At full throttle they will burn about 50 litres / hr and possibly a bit more.

I'm older so prefer something with a "carb" on it

Fuel consumption - at least double what your 75 sucked.

I have a 26 foot walk-around (all wood, mahogany over fir) - totally loaded weight (including passengers etc) on the water is about 2800 pounds.

It's powered by a 140 horse Evinrude (90 degree 4 cylinder). Tweaked with an adjustable plate, hydraulic trim tabs etc and tracked with a fuel flow meter, I burn about 8.2 gallons per hour (31 litres/hour) at "cruise speed", which is in the high 20's (about 40 kmh) - that gives me about 10 hours of "run time" - enough to cruise an entire long weekend with some pit stops along the canal system.

If I open it up and just run, while it get in the low 30 mph range (50'ish kmh) it only takes about 5 1/2 hours to drain my twin 40 gallon fuel tanks - so 300 litres in about 5 1/2 hours - and gas just "dropped" to a buck a litre this afternoon.

I don't open her up much

Go with the carb'ed as the EFI will need work from just setting.