That Old Johnson...

I guess I can't really complain. My duck boat motor is 55 years old and beside putting fuel stabilizer in the tank every year, I haven't had to do anything to this motor. We had some issues when Dad and I went to test the motor before hunting season this year, but we thought we got it fixed. Then the first weekend of duck hunting, not only did the motor not start, but we broke the recoil assembly in the process.

So, between the first and second weekends of duck hunting, Dad and I planned on getting the motor fixed. We knew we needed a new recoil spring and three retracter springs, but since I was at the ultimate boat motor part store, I figured I would try and find the lower motor cover, and sure enough, they had one! I still need to camo it up (as you can see below, it is still Johnson Seahorse green) but it makes the motor look much better!

The rebuilding of the recoil assembly went very well, no problems at all! Which was amazing considering all the little springs and the everything was under spring tension! The only problems is that is still wouldn't start. It would fire, chug, and die, fire chug, and die, over and over again. There isn't anything we could do to get it going. We were changing the mixture ratios, checking the spark plugs and wires, we even tore the carburetor apart and cleaned it out, but still nothing. Since we really only had one day to work on the motor and Dad and I both had sore shoulders from pulling the motor, we had to realize that we were not going to have it for the weekend.

After the second weekend of duck hunting, I had to work most of the week, so I brought the boat motor up to Dad's house. We did some research online and found an amazing website, specifically for rebuilding these types of motors! I HIGHLY recommend this website for anyone that has one of these little motors. Dad did a bunch of tests on the motor, testing the coils, points, condensers, timing, ect. He basically came to the conclusion that one of the condensers was bad. So we made the trip to Napa and bought an ignition rebuild kit specifically for this motor (amazing huh?!) and swapped out the old with the new ignition parts. We put the motor back together and clamped it to the side of the recycling bin (filled with water) and gave it a pull...nothing...after about three more pulls, the motor was RUNNING!

We ran the motor for about 15 minutes, getting the mixtures on both the fast and slow idle dialed in. The motor ran very well and started every time. The fix on the motor only cost about $40 from start to finish which I didn't think was bad at all! I was very happy to have in running before the next duck hunting trip, because that involved taking the decoys out for the season!