Plumcrazycuda5
New member
Hello all I’m new here, I’m very mechanical and have worked on vehicles my whole life but I’m not too familiar with outboards and was looking for some answers hopefully. I have a 1988 evinrude 90hp on my boat that lost a cylinder last year, a chunk of piston broke off and gouged the cylinder pretty deep. This spring I was given a 1976 Johnson 85hp for free from a friend that had an old boat sitting around and just wanted to get rid of it. It’s sat for years so I soaked the cylinders for a couple days and did a compression test on it and it’s bang on 100psi across all 4 cylinders. My question is can I unbolt the 1976 powerhead from the midsection and bolt it into mine? All the motor mounts look the same and everything but I’m just not sure about the drive and the exhaust? From what I can find it should bolt in but I can’t find a for sure answer and would rather not pull them both apart to find out it will not work. The reason I just want to swap powerheads is to keep my current tilt/trim set up as the older one would need a full rebuild.
