Hello all! I'm new to this forum and new to boating. While I'm 40 years old, boating has managed to stay out of the hobby list till now. However, I have 6 year old and 3 year old boys and they love to go fishing.
I purchased a 14 foot row boat from a neighbor last year and cleaned it up. Found someone selling a 10hp Johnson Seahorse model QD-20 and picked it up too.
The motor has been well maintained. From what I've been able to learn from this website, it is a 1959 model, that takes a 2 cycle mix of 24:1.
However, while it is obvious that the motor has had a recent rebuild, it still is not running well. When I turn the throttle to SLOW or SHIFT to go from forward to reverse, it stalls. In fact, when we took it out last weekend, it barely ran at all. It was very rough and no power. Every once it a while, it would catch and run very smoothly will accpetable power, but after 10 or 15 seconds of this nirvana, it would quickly go back to running very poorly.
I've worked on older car motors in the past, so I do have a little bit of mechanical ability. However, I'm lost when it comes to this outboard.
I pulled the plugs and cleaned them, but no help. I have a couple of quesitons:
1. - What resource material would you recommend I borrow from library or purchase in order to better understand and maintain this motor?
2. - How do you set the air mixture settings? There are 2 on the front of the motor. A white, outer ring that goes from 1 to 6 and is labeled Lean on one side and Rich on the other. I have to keep this all the way on Lean to get it to run at all. The second adjustment is a needle pointer that can make multiple 360 turns. This is labeled SLOW and I assume is for when the motor is just idling as opposed to turning the throttle up. I have not been able to figure how to set this one at all.
Before I take it to a shop and hand over the bucks to get it tuned up, I'm hoping to get some suggestions from you experts. Thanks in advance.
-Vinny
I purchased a 14 foot row boat from a neighbor last year and cleaned it up. Found someone selling a 10hp Johnson Seahorse model QD-20 and picked it up too.
The motor has been well maintained. From what I've been able to learn from this website, it is a 1959 model, that takes a 2 cycle mix of 24:1.
However, while it is obvious that the motor has had a recent rebuild, it still is not running well. When I turn the throttle to SLOW or SHIFT to go from forward to reverse, it stalls. In fact, when we took it out last weekend, it barely ran at all. It was very rough and no power. Every once it a while, it would catch and run very smoothly will accpetable power, but after 10 or 15 seconds of this nirvana, it would quickly go back to running very poorly.
I've worked on older car motors in the past, so I do have a little bit of mechanical ability. However, I'm lost when it comes to this outboard.
I pulled the plugs and cleaned them, but no help. I have a couple of quesitons:
1. - What resource material would you recommend I borrow from library or purchase in order to better understand and maintain this motor?
2. - How do you set the air mixture settings? There are 2 on the front of the motor. A white, outer ring that goes from 1 to 6 and is labeled Lean on one side and Rich on the other. I have to keep this all the way on Lean to get it to run at all. The second adjustment is a needle pointer that can make multiple 360 turns. This is labeled SLOW and I assume is for when the motor is just idling as opposed to turning the throttle up. I have not been able to figure how to set this one at all.
Before I take it to a shop and hand over the bucks to get it tuned up, I'm hoping to get some suggestions from you experts. Thanks in advance.
-Vinny
nce you have your ignition fixed up you can adjust your high and low speed knobs. As I recall these are held on with a screw and the shaft 
