I have a 1975 9.8 merc that I've been working on lately that was sitting around for a while. It has good spark to the bottom cylinder, but the top doesn't spark hardly at all. Every once in a while I could see a very little orange spark come off of it, so I thought maybe it was the ignition coil (in line with the spark plug). So I replaced it with a new one, and still no change in spark. Now I'm thinking it might be a stator coil (which there are only two on this model) so I'm thinking of replacing them both (they're only about $15 each so why not right?). I know it's not the ignition cable assembly (the cable that holds the spark plug and connects to the coil) because I switched them around to check and same thing, spark on same coil. So, I just wanted to know if anyone thinks it could be something otherwise than the stator coils. Let me know, Thanks.