Keeping Up With Your Old Outboard

When the wind doesn’t blow—which is all too common on the Chesapeake Bay where I sail—we need some way to move our boats.

- Jerry Culik

Most of us have an outboard motor; and some of us have old outboards. On my Potter 15, Blue Knot, I use a little 1.5-hp Evinrude that’s 50 years young. It looks ugly but it fires up on the second or third pull even when it’s cold. (If you think about how few hours a year we actually run our outboard motors, compared to driving our cars, we ought to be able to keep any of them running reliably for many years and many nautical miles. And with a little care and attention, I believe this is very possible.)

Small outboards are not complicated, and they were designed to run reliably under pretty adverse conditions. Watermen bought the earliest outboard motors to gain an edge on their competition, or to make it just a little easier to keep working out on the Bay. The “good old” outboards—the ones that were built in the 1950s and later—are even better than those early, antique outboards. They are just as reliable, and a lot easier and cheaper to fix than state-of-the-art motors. If you feel that your outboard, old or new, is finicky or just plain unreliable, and it doesn’t start after a couple of pulls, there is probably some adjustment or a simple repair you can make to get it back to its original, reliable condition. And if you are willing to care for an older outboard, I’ll share some thoughts on where and how to find one.

How to Keep it Running Well

Here are my suggestions to help ensure that your outboard has a long, useful life:

• If the motor has a shift lever on the side and you can’t store the motor upright, then lay the motor down on the control handle side. Repairing a broken shift lever can be an absolute pain.

• Never crank an engine backwards. Only turn the engine flywheel clockwise—the way the recoil starter spins it. You can permanently damage the water pump impeller if you turn it backwards.