The Great Evinrude Adventure!

[Buggy]

I might have to give them a shout if I need anything. It's quite possible that the internal seals and parts are similar to the Sachs engines. A friend of mine has one of the Sachs engines. I should compare the seals and bearings etc. Anyway, continuing on with the story...

After I got the parts sled I switched over the spark plugs and hit the starter. She fired right up! I took it out for a quick spin around the yard, but when I let my buddy ride it the old girl just up and died out in the yard. We towed it back in and started to figure out the issue. After trying a few things we figured out that I had a vacuum leak somewhere on the fan side of the engine. I also tried to fix my gauge lights and in doing so I shorted the wiring and the whole wiring harness melted! Apparently fuses were not thought of on these sleds... LOL! The only part of the electrical system that was fused from the factory was the cigarette lighter... Yes this sled has a cigarette lighter! It also has electric start, neutral, and reverse! Pretty advanced for 1973. I was planning on just swapping wiring harnesses from my parts sled over, but being my sled is early production the harnesses were different. I ended up going through the entire harness and repairing the damaged wires. I also had to replace the ignition switch connector and I installed a fuseable link right at the ignition solenoid. As for the vacuum leak, I found that the crank seal on that side of the engine was toast. I was going to swap seals from the parts sled engine, but again the early production issue bit me in the ass. The engines used 2 different sized seals. I was told the engine in my parts sled ran so I decided just to swap engines completely until I could track down a replacement seal. I swapped engines, but the new engine didn't even want to start! After a lot of trial and error I realized I had been taken for a ride and the parts engine was actually toast. I took it apart and found that all the side and corner seals were seized stiff in the rotor. Back to the drawing board...