First time poster here, Thanks in advance for any help with this. Looking for some help on this motor,98 Mercury 40hp 3cyl 2-stroke ser# OG688315. Engine runs good at top end. has trouble starting, backfires and dies. Worse cold than warm. 1500-1800 rpm pops and looses rpm then recovers. Also keeps blowing the "bleed" hoses off and spitting fuel oil mix out of check valve. Have downloaded Mercury manual and tested ohms and dva of trigger, stator, coils per book and all seem to test good. Checked idle and wot timing, both were good per book.Last time out I pulled plugs after a few hours riding the pontoon and found the top and bottom plug wet and very oily. center plug looked fairly normal. any ideas would be appreciated.
