I think its been 7 years since I've had this one running. It's an electric start 1958 Johnson Super Seahorse. This motor came with my 16' Richline, and back then it took only points, a new coil and some head scratching to make it push the boat at about 25 mph, which wasn't bad. I remember the last day I ran it ... I had decided the carb needed a rebuild. It was difficult to start. Last night I did a compression test (first one since I've owned the motor), planning to get the boat back in the water soon, and I'm only coming up with about 25 psi per cylinder using the electric starter .. which is cranking very slowly. The motor has been in the weather,(covered much of the time), but I only had the lower unit off for all of this time so the power head should have been sealed up tight. <br /><br />Could the motor have been running before on only 25 psi compression, and that was making it hard to start at that time? I haven't pulled the head yet as I didn't want to open it up until I had a new head gasket in hand. I did tilt the motor so the cylinders were pointing upward and sprayed WD40 into each, and that made no difference in the compression which suggests to me that this may not be a ring or cylinder problem (unless its really severe.)<br /><br />This motor also has compression release, which shouldn't engage when using the electric starter, but I'm not convinced that isn't the problem. I think its strange that both cylinders are that bad, and with similar bad compression in each. Am I just thinking wishfully that this could be a compression release thing, or maybe just a blown head gasket ... or even possibly valves?<br /><br />Thanks in advance for any advice.<br />Tom
