Will this work with my 4 hp

[Don Hansen]

Re: Will this work with my 4 hp

you can get a welder to fix that with aluminum of the correct thickness, But it might be cheaper to buy a used one on e-bay, the salvage yards listed here on iboats.

I held off from telling the whole story about my 4 hp but here goes. My 1970 4 hp with many many hours on it developed a noisy connecting rod plus was getting real tired. I saw a 1974 power head for sale on Ebay that the seller claimed had low hours and since power heads from 1970 to 1977 have the same part number, I ordered it. When I got it I was surprised that I could still see, by looking through the spark plug holes, the cross hatch on the cylinder wall. It was then I noticed that this power head also had a loose rod. Since it was getting close to my trip to Canada I thought I would take a chance and rebuild it when I got home. Well, it lasted one hour before the rod let loose and put that hole in the block. Since I could tell that the power head had never been taken apart and was truly low hours here's what I think happened. In 1974 someone bought a new 4 hp but noticed after a few hours that it was making a noise. Instead of repairing the original power head they replaced it with a new one. The bad power head sat on a shelf for all those years until someone decided they could sell it on Ebay. I paid $125 each for the power head, the new crankshaft, and the connecting rod but hopefully I'm getting a like new motor out of it.

DLH

 

[Don Hansen]

Re: Will this work with my 4 hp

I've seen many posts about our 4HP's having to use 24/1 due to the lack of needle bearings (or may be the presence of needle bearings I don't remember) Anyway over time I started mixing richer for the 4HP. Now I'm at 30/1 full synthetic. I've experienced no problems at all with the richer mix so I will keep it up. I still have my 95-40HP. on VRO and it seems to use less than a 50/1 mix over all, at least in my mind it does. I've never tried to calculate the actual oil use on it. Rick.

Only the upper main bearing is a needle bearing. Like I said, my 1970 power head had many many hours on it. And that was at a mix of 50 to 1. It amazes me that, except for the lower rod bearing, the rest were like new. Most of the hours on that power head were at trolling speed, so maybe that's why. I thought about rebuilding it but I don't know of a place I can trust to bore the cylinders 0.030 over.

DLH