1972 Evinrude 125 HP trouble under flywheel

[boltbreaker]

Hello. I have a 1972 Evinrude 125 HP model 125283R. It has the style of igintion system that just uses one coil... and it feeds to a stator looking thing under the flywheel with four wires coming out of it.<br />I'm having trouble with spark. It will through out a good hot 1/2" gapped spark out of the single coil. However, it will not put out spark at the plugs. It's weak on all four(1/4 inch gap only) and interminant on the #2 cylinder real bad.<br /> The coil is routed up into the stator, and it has some sensors under the flywheel. I know I have enough fire from coming out of the coil, but it isn't making it past here.<br /> Does anyone have any ideas on how to test past the coil?<br /> THANKS SO MUCH IN ADVANCE. -BB-

 

[Joe Reeves]

Re: 1972 Evinrude 125 HP trouble under flywheel

The coil is attached (via a brass screw in terminal) to a distributor cap which incorporates a rotor that distributes the spark to four brass terminals in that cap. It is not attached to the stator.<br /><br />A problem might exist whereas the portion of the cap where the coil screws into it might have a slight crack which would allow the spark to jump to ground.<br /><br />Also, the rotor might be cracked slightly which would affect the spark.<br /><br />Then again..... you could be lucky and simply have a cap and rotor combination that are filthy dirty. In which case, a good cleaning may be all that's needed.

 

[boltbreaker]

Re: 1972 Evinrude 125 HP trouble under flywheel

Thanks MR. Reeves. I went outside and fooled with it some more since my first post. I finally seen the "rotor" under the flywheel. I had looked at it before but didn't notice it... I did a little cleaning on it(it looks like it's supposed to be brass, but has kinda of a silvery grey appearance) and it improved some. It's now jumping 3/8 on three with the number four still intermitinant. I think I'm gonna pull it apart and clean on it some more... hopefully that will help. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post. I greatly apprecitate it. thanks again, BB

 

[John Bett]

Re: 1972 Evinrude 125 HP trouble under flywheel

Hello,<br />I had a similar problem on mine where the spark plug wires are crimped to the little stud which threads into the dist. cap. There was corosion there, so I carefully removed the little stud end and stripped about 1/2" of wire back to fresh and re crimped the cap and tested resistance of corse to make sure they were all about the same.