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Health Check of an Older Johnson Evinrude Outboard

Today's video is about inspecting and servicing an old motor that's new to you, and is proudly sponsored by MarineEngine.com

Health Check of an Older Johnson Evinrude Outboard – Video Transcript

Hey there, Dangar Stu here. Today's video is about inspecting and servicing an old motor that's new to you, and is proudly sponsored by MarineEngine.com. This will probably end up being a bit of a series of videos and we're going to be doing this on the Johnson 30 that we had lying around the workshop for a while. The idea here is that you buy or bought or inherited an old boat maybe it's a boat has been run for a while and you're really trying to get it up and running. We're gonna start this series by just having a good look at this outboard I've seen the outboard before in the past it had a lot of problems. The owners in the south will affect importance of a new outboard so it's either kind of be destined for the rubbish tube or see if we can get it going again.

It's one of those out boards that would take a lot more money to get running again properly than it's worth if you're not doing it yourself. But once you're doing yourself most out boards are recoverable. What we're gonna do is start by just inspecting the outboard. We'll probably pull it apart as a part of the inspection see what parts we need to order and then we'll go from there. Before we do that though another viewer t-shirt photo this one is Steve Josie in Florida so thanks Steve. I've got a video coming out soon on buying a second-hand boat but this video is more coming from the angle that you've already got the motor.

It's either yours and it hasn't run for a while or perhaps you've been given it or inherited it whatever it is and you're really looking at it saying how do I get from this point to having the boat running. We did a little bit of detective work on the serial number thanks to a local Evinrude dealer down the road and he said that he found a serial number similar to this Johnson which was from 1994 so it was reading you know so many numbers old an apparently regardless of model they're all just done sequentially so we're thinking this is a 94 outboard.

As well I presume there was some sort of sticker on the bracket that told us the exact model number but that's long gone. Obviously that's important information to have because if you're looking to track down a service manual for it, which I highly recommend if you are going to be doing a lot of work to any outboard, and also for ordering parts. Alright let's go over now and just have a quick look over the powerhead in the leg because I think it can be a brief visual inspection just sort of let you know where you're up against. We'll start at the front here so first off the bat yourlooking for completeness. We've got some sort of earth strap here that's going to nowhere so we have to figure that out.

The air box is missing off the front of the carburetor here so that's same we're probably going to need to source as well. Coming around the side here straight away you can see this wires being pulled out of the connector here so there's obviously some issues with the wiring. Wiring where you've either got pulled out missing connection or the insulation is broken and is touching another metal part of the outboard there can be really tricky problems to find so by giving it all the thorough visual inspection you can save yourself a lot of headache later on.

With the fuel pump I'd be looking for leaks in the hose, leaks from the gaskets all that kind of thing. Coils we can do some tests on down the track so we'll probably do some resistance tests on the coils, we can also have a look at the spark plugs in here and get us into the condition do compression tests all that kind of stuff. Looks like the thermostat for this outboard is under this water jacket cover, it's probably another thing I'd replace as a matter of course just to make sure it's not seized up particular it hasn't been moving for a while.

Here's an example of a wire that's actually a main positive and the installation is broken there so that could be a problem. If we're blowing fuses shorting, whatever, solenoid you can test that easy enough and then starter looks a little manky. Bit rusty once again could be a voltage drop over bad connections like this and it's not seized which is good but may not have high compression either. Down here we can see the trim pins been replace with some sort of gal bolt which isn't ideal. The grill here is broken a bit as well.Left on the anode props missing a bit gigs in one piece so as you can see few issues but nothing that can't be fixed. So the first decision I think you always need to make is my even going to start trying to fix this outboard or am I gonna just part it out.

The first thing I do with this outboard is take the gearbox off and the reason for that is I want to go on and do some compression tests to make sure this out boards worth putting some time and effort in. But I don't want to turn the water pump, the reason I don�t want to turn the water pump is I don't know what condition the impellers in, I don't know how old it is, I don't know how long it's been sitting Still.

That impeller might be really easy to take a gearbox off pull it put a new one in but if I try and run it first though ours got no water. I better replace it whatever there's a chance that old brittle impeller will actually break up and bits of it will go through the cooling system and that's an absolute nightmare you can end up having to pull the head off pull the head apart to get these little bits of impeller out so I'd much rather take that gearbox off get that pump away before I even begin turn the motor over for the first time. Bits of impeller aren't likely to go through the cooling system when you don't have water going through it so if you just ran the impeller dry but that's not a great thing either so let's just take it off. Before I take the gearbox off I'm just going to drain the oil out of it once again when we see the condition in the oil it'll tell us something else.

The seals good are they bad that drain plugs pretty stuck I'm just going to put an impact driver see if we can shift it. Top was quite stuck to one thing I need to change me this stand is maybe put a brace here and a brace at the back the brace at the moment here is almost exactly under where the oil comes out a lot of outboards have a design fault. Pretty much pure water was coming out on the bottom you can still see here just water dripping and bit of oil floating on top so we've obviously got some seal work to do as well. You can see it's not really emulsified because it obvious hasn't been run for a while so even if it was it seems to have separated back out again. We'll take this prop off while the oil keeps draining with these split pins I just grabbed them with some diagonal cutters pinch them and then give it against the nut just sort of lever them out.

Be careful if you are grabbing props like that with a rag or whatever if the nut doesn't come on you can spin the prop cut your hand. This thrust washer looks pretty gnarly and obviously you can see dust falling off here so it's pretty dry - lets get a pry bar in there. No obvious signs a fishing line or anything but we'll have to do a pressure test to figure out where that leak is. Next I'm gonna do is take what's left of this intake grill off so we can get to the shift linkage. Inside here there's a couple of Philips heads one on this side that goes through this one and into the other side and one on the other side down low. It holds the two grills on so I think we'll order some replacements for those as well, not looking too healthy. This is our shift linkage now that we need to undo using a couple of spanners.

I'm just gonna brush a little bit of this corrosion and some of these barnacles off it once you've got this collar undone you can lift it up and then undo this little section, here's a little sort of nylon wage the stops are coming off, because we need to drop this all the way off in order to let this rod here slide up through the gearbox. So this is the little tapered keeper it splits along one edge so you can just open it up and take it off once you got a little keeper off the collar I'll just slide off. Now we've got four bolts here to each side and one up here. All right now we've got the gearbox off let's go ahead and do those compression tests. To do these compression tests I'm just putting a jump starter straight onto the starter motor bottom cylinders 110 so not too bad yeah similar sort of 105 not too bad.

When you do compression tests like that on an outboard we the disconnected it's best if you just pull the out that way you disable the ignition and you won't get spark going through the coils which will either damage the coil or cause spark and if this fuel in the cowling or whatever you can get a fire. I had the whole forward control disconnected which probably means did have spark so my bad but you get the idea. The compression test results were reasonably high and reasonably close to each other so that's good sign, means we haven't hit anything that's made me say and let's just stop here and not put any time or money into this outboard. I'll put this up in the lower unit stand now and we just have a look at the water pump see what conditions in see what we need to order. Looks like there's five 5/16 bolts on this on looks like whole driveshaft comes out easily on this model.

So here's the impeller no broken blades and that's awesome because what we don't want is to see broken blades and not know where they are this gives us a fair bit of confidence. Now that we can just put in your impeller in and no we're not going to have bits of old impeller blocking up the cooling system. Just have a look at this baseplate what's left of its gasket so we'll be reordering the gasket for the bottom here under the base plate looks like some oil seals which I'll replace while we're here. I think it's fair to say that was pretty stuck a lot of salt and sort of sand or maybe just as aluminum corrosion in here what I'm going to do is look at a parts diagram to see what happens next. Looks like there's a bearing under there and then maybe this is a bit of a bushing rather than oil seal so I'll look into that before I pull that out. That's about as far as we're going to get with this outboard today because I'm gonna need to order some more parts but hopefully it gives you an idea of the general approach I would take to an older outboard though I didn't really know the history of.

I could definitely have checked for spark as well when I was testing the compression but I don't consider no spark as much of a showstopper you know you can swap a coil out pretty easily and generally you kind of back in action. If you've had zero compression and needed new rings new pistons, machining to sort of go oversized pistons etc and that will be more of an issue in my mind. What I'm gonna do now though is we're gonna order four bits we need for the water pump I'll also order the air box for the front of the carburetor because that's missing entirely, and I'll just pop all these bits in a ziploc bags won't lose any of them. When you're doing a project like this I think it's really good just to bag everything up as you go you could end up taking this completely apart in which case it's nice to go to put the lower unit back together go into a single bag and go right this is all the lower unit hardware everything I needs in there without having to figure out is that a bolt from the power head whatever. Just keeps them grouped and stops them getting lost so the parts I'm gonna order is the airbox for the front of the carburetor.

I'll also ultimately probably be going through the carburetor, going through the prime system, going through the fuel pump, so we'll need kits for all that. At the impeller side we're gonna need the main sealing o-ring, there's no ring up here this is a seal for the shift linkage, someone did all that with these base plates they get worn you can feel this quite a groove here now so we'll get a new base plate get a new gasket get a new impeller do the whole water pump as well we're also gonna need oil seals. I didn't pressure test that to find out which oil seal was bad but we've got our driveshaft oil seal out we'll do the prop shaft all seal because it's always a prime candidate, and we're doing the shift linkage oil seal as well. That way we can trust the gearbox completely.

On another note you may be wondering what's happening with the boat build. Turns out the two local suppliers that I get wood from are both out of marine ply at the moment so I couldn't get more. I plan to push on with that project but when that arrives we all get going. What I'll probably try and do is keep the videos on the boat building and sort of interleave them with work on this Johnson just to keep a bit of variety there as well.

All right well take care I'll catch you soon see you.