Hello fellow boaters. I recently purchased a 1989 mariner 25hp engine. The motor is bare bones no es or pt. I replaced the impeller when I bought it and changed the lower unit fluid. I recently noticed some black sludge looking stuff coming from the prop. I was told by a friend that because I leave the motor in the up position and my fuel line connected that it is forcing gas thru the carb and it is dripping down thru the pan and coming out the exhaust port cleaning the carbon off creating the sludge. It is also the reason it is running on one cylinder because of seriously flooding and thus fouling a plug. I have not changed the plugs yet. I ran it out of gas last night and I will be replacing the plugs tonight to see if it clears up. I had originally thought that I had lower end problems but everything functions fine. Now on to my findings. Upon looking at the motor/lower unit I saw an opening above the lower unit below the power head. In this opening you can see the shift linkage. Around the linkage there are two (what look like dowel pins) about 1/2inch-3/4inch long by 1/4 inch thick pins. Each end is beveled making me think that it could be part of a bearing. They are just laying on each side of the linkage and can be moved around and without much effort I could probably get them to fall down into the lower unit if I move them around. They will not fall out because the opening is smaller than these pins. The motor runs fine and all mechanical seems to function perfectly. My question is should I be worrying about these (becasue I am) or could someone have rebuilt this thing before me and just dropped a few of the bearings down the shaft. My usless climber manual does not show any dowel pins in the motor/ or lower unit and the seem to be located in the grey area between the two. Sorry for the long winded post but if anyone knows what they could be please let me know. Thanks, Brian
