TheRedDirge
New member
Hi all, I'm quite new to the world of boating and just purchased a 16ft runabout with a 1973 Johnson 65HP Powershift 2 on it. I bought it on craigslist sight unseen for $650, and it's been nothing but trouble so far. The man I bought it from said that it last ran in 2016 and has good compression, that he fogged the cylinders before storage and drained the lower unit of oil. Sounded good, so I picked it up and bought a new battery for it. Upon turning the key though, nothing happened. No click of the starter solenoid, nothing. First thing I tried was running jumper cables direct to the starter terminals and the starter cranked, then I messed around with the solenoid by running a jumper from the small yellow wire to the large red one with the key turned, and nothing happened. So I've concluded there's no power going to the solenoid for whatever reason. The strange thing is though, when I was first messing with it, as soon as I turned the key into the run position, the choke solenoid would move ever so slightly, which makes me think the ignition switch is good. However now that I've disconnected a few things and reconnected them, there's nothing, and the choke solenoid no longer moves when the key is turned or choke switch is lifted. So either something that I reconnected isn't making contact, or I've fried something in testing with all the jumpers. I'm at a loss here with what to do next, and am wondering if this is even worth it. The engine, being 65HP seems like it could be pretty sweet if I got it running, but the boat itself is not in the best of shape and would need a ton of work to make it nice again. I was considering pulling the engine to keep for myself, but I feel like it'd be dang near impossible to sell the boat after that, so I'm wondering what I should do. I feel like I need to get the engine running in any case, so that's where I'm gonna start. Any ideas or advise on it would be great, and I can provide pictures and other info if needed.
Thanks for your time
Thanks for your time