TOPIC: 1967 merc 950 SS

I have the opportunity to buy a merc 950 ss with a junk boat for $400 I have been told it should run. Is it worth buying? I figured this would be the best place to get a good answer

Condition is what it is all about.

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If owner say it will run ,Take a battery and some gas and see if it wants to run.----If not you might want to get it in writing and 1/2 money back if it does not start for you.

wheres it located up in Wis?
or down in Illinois?....

professor wrote:

Condition is what it is all about.

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If owner say it will run ,Take a battery and some gas and see if it wants to run.----If not you might want to get it in writing and 1/2 money back if it does not start for you.

Good advice. I'll have to remember that tactic!

If at all possible...at a minimum what I do when considering a used motor....Especially one 40 + years old, is I take a battery, jumper cables, spark tester, compression tester and a plug wrench to remove.
Fist thing after visual outside inspection of motor and controls(looking at wiring harness cable and condition of battery cables...usually pretty dried and cracked.). Then turn manually try to turn the prop....to both see if it is free and in or out of gear. If it is stuck then it could be a seized motor...but lets move on.
Next remove the cowl/cover and see if you can manually turn the flywheel. If so good.
Now if there are controls and key....plug in the harness and connect the battery. Turn the key to on...push the choke button to see if electronic choke is clicking and working. If so ...good. Try to crank the motor with the key. If it cranks...good. Now pull a spark plug...connect the plug wire to a grounded spark tester and screw in a compression tester. Crank. Spark jumping...good...compression decent (over a hundred at least cold?) good. If no spark...no serious worries. Good compression on all cyls( that is over 100 and real close together on them all) is the most important thing here. Spark can be restored and is easier than rebuilding the powerhead with a bad cyl. That said...if it is 70's motor with electronic ignition then switchbox's and powerpacks and triggers etc are pretty pricy and older magnitos are hard to find major parts like rotors are also pricy/. Lots of times....spark on older motors can be easily restored by a good points clean/reset.

Anyways.....just a few thoughts when finding an old motor.

Hi folks! Has anyone used the replcement internal wire harness from CDI Electronics ? My wires inside a Merc 1000 are dry and cracked ,need fixing. Thanks .

Those CDI harnesses are OK They don't fit quite as nicely as the originals but will work . What year 1000 do you have?? I ask because earlier ones used a totally different harness. As I recall 1967 & newer should be like the CDI harness. Prior to that is a different animal

Thanks tim . I got a68 or 69 1000 E SS. Last time I ran it on the hose w/ covers off saw little smoke and arcing at white stator wires. shut it down but noticed all internal wires are in poor condition. CDI Catalog seems to have condensed their product to one size fits all applications. fixing the wires coming down from stator will be more of a big deal. thanks again for your info.

On all my Merc's ( all seem to have bad internal harnesses 1966-72 ) I have Cut back the internal harness as close to the plug as posible and replaced one wire at a time with similar wire, and color if posible, soldering the connections and using good shring wrap on the wires and finishing off with liquid electrical tape and sometimes Black electrical tape or a larger heat shrink to bind them by the plug, not original but easy enough to do... and relatively cheap...

I also repair a lot of them that way. Costliest part is all the different color wires required. There is a way to avoid that also, the external harnesses have the same color wires. I cut back into them until I find good wire & use that. They even use the good tin coated copper wire.

Thats a good idea! I didnt even think about reusing a bad harnes! Thanks
Tim!