OLD outboard motors
 

I've got an old Sea King 5 hp outboard motor my dad bought new in 1959. It's a great little motor but I need a float and carb kit for it.
Sea Kings were manufactured by several companies and sold through Montgomery Wards from 1933 to 1986.
So far I've not found a source for these obsolete parts. The same carb had to have been used on Evinrudes (since Evinrude made Sea Kings for MW ) and others I would imagine.
Anybody know of a good old outboard engine parts source?

Re: Old outboard motors
 

My father in law bought a Sea King Boat and motors ,,( year was about 1964) it was a used one with twin motors and the wife and I went out to sea from Garibalti on the Pacific Coast fishing and on the way back in he miss read the buoys and we went aground .,.I flew out of the boat and when I hit the water I was sitting up,,, shallow sand bar broke both sheer pins .. he had problems with them sheer pins until he sold it .. sorry boog , I have no parts to help ya out with,, the Wards boat just brought back that memory and had to share it .

Re: Old outboard motors
 

I have a 15 hp I will have to do something with on a 12 Foot Alumacraft.
This is a Project for another day.:ito:

My first thought is,
Can a spacer be machined and use a Updated Carb,?

Re: Old outboard motors
 

The float is made of a sort of foam looking substance with a coating over it and it has deteriorated and no longer "floats". I've done a lot of googling today and I ordered a carb kit for a newer 5 hp Johnson and Evinrude carb to see if I can make it work. It looks to be shiny like plastic. We'll see.
Since the controls go through the housing I don't see where another type of carb would work. And I don't want to change the looks of this motor.
I read this motor sold for $210 back in 1959. That wasn't cheap back then.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

My first thought would be to see if maybe you could mail it out to one of those online 3d printer services. Never done it before personally but have a couple of friends that have pretty good success with bit that they sent out. I was thinking of using one to scan one of the chrome plated plastic vents for my under dash AC that I wasn't able to find and pretty sure it hasn't been made since 65 or so.

Funny that you bring the Sea King up. I have what I think is a 15hp under the house that came with the house when we bought it 15 years ago. It's still in the box that it came in and Im not sure it had ever been used. If it wasnt so poorly lit down there right now, Id go snap a couple of pics.

This weekend Im helping my Aunt clean out her late husbands cabin. He was a collector of all things old and super heavy. Several wood stoves, bunch of big old cast iron tools and one V8 two stroke Chrysler (I think) outboard motor from the late 60's. Ill get some pics of it. Whether I can get it out from cabin's crawl space without having to be rescued myself could be a different story though..I have no idea how he got all of the stuff down there in the first place :lol:

Re: Old outboard motors
 

The float is probably made from that nitrophyl stuff.
Is it something like these?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15500538290...7a3eb8794bbeb8

https://www.ebay.com/itm/17533551962...Cclp%3A2047675

Re: Old outboard motors
 

If the new parts won't work, have you looked into any vintage motor boat forums? I also had a smaller Power King outboard that I ended up selling at Spring Carlisle. I searched the internet to get an idea on it's value I stumbled upon an old motor boat forum where the classic boat folks hang out. Lots of knowledge there, just like for GM Trucks here

Re: Old outboard motors
 

The kit I ordered is for a newer 5 hp Johnson & Evinrude. The float is different but maybe I can make it work. As I said, it looks to be hard black plastic so maybe it holds up to gas better. For less than $10, it's worth a try.
What got me to this point is Dad parked this engine after he retired and bought a new 15 hp Johnson w/electric start. I can see why now that I am THAT age.:lol: Anyway the 5 hp sat unused for 25 years or so. After he passed, I became the owner of the Sea King 5 and I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago to use again. It had always been real easy to start but now was difficult. It had a fuel starvation issue. Only running on choke. Well yesterday I pulled the covers off and right away I found a split fuel hose from the carb to the pump. OMG, that thing is 63 years old and just split all over. So I replaced it then fired it up. It ran good again but was dripping a lot of gas out of the throat of the carb, so I pulled it off to give it a good cleaning out and found the float very much deteriorated. They don't live forever.
Dad always ran all the gas out of it when leaving the lake and always stored this motor standing up so it was always stored dry in our storage room. Doing so, this motor was just a 3 pull start, even after sitting over the winter months. Each spring all we did was full choke, pull, half choke, pull, then choke off and pull. Boom, it was running. It was just that easy. We didn't use it but a few times each year and it was always dependable. I have a newer Mercury motor (1981 I think) also but it's not as sweet as the much older Sea King. I'll pull the Merc out next and see if it's still ready to go.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

Possible bits of dead hose or even small bugs found their way into the small passages of the carb. Or for that matter, bits of dying float.

If your $10 float doesn't work, there may be a Sea King forum where you can research carb replacements. After spending $30+ dollars for parts and several hours on an old carb on an ATV and not making things much better, found a $20 made in China replacement carb on Amazon. Runs and starts much better.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

When you said "old", I didn't really expect that old....LOL

I've got a 9.9 HP Mercury on a stand, in the garage, that hasn't seen water (or the light of day for that matter) in well over 25 years. My brother bought it new in '79 or '80? We used to run it on a little aluminum row boat. The 9.9 made it legal for some of the lakes around here that had limits.
That boat was stolen from the back lot of my brother's old shop in the early 90s , but the motor is still around.
I've thought about selling it, but figured it would just be a headache so someone, so never bothered. Being a Merc, parts are probably easier to source?

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[QUOTE=LONGHAIR;9113882]When you said "old", I didn't really expect that old....LOL

My brother just got told that his 1982 Mercury boat motor was to old for the shop to work on it..

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A good friend of mine gave me his dad's '57 Mercury Outboard motor!!! I can't wait to find a vintage aluminum boat to put it on and haul it behind my '55 Chevy Belair!!!

Re: Old outboard motors
 

Maybe I should have typed the topic line like this: OLD outboard motors. I don't think it's THAT old since I was born in the early 50s too. :lol:

Re: Old outboard motors
 

these old outboard motors I see at auctions and estate sales call to me, but i just ignore them. otherwise I would have a pile of them and no boat.

the float pinches off the fuel supply when the bowl is full by using the buoyancy to close an inlet needle valve. it keeps the fuel pump ( or gravity feed) from overtopping the fuel bowl.

this isnt a lesson in carbs, just making the point that you could get a couple brass balls and solder them together and to the mechanism that closes the inlet and as long as it fit inside the bowl you would be good.

another thing is to hit up a small engine shop, they will have a ton of old carbs "floating" around in a piles somewhere. you can find something close and solder it on. just regular old lead solder will work, as long as the final product is rigid, and the floating float closes the inlet.

good luck!

Re: Old outboard motors
 

[quote=GOPAPA;9113893]Sounds like he took it to a worthless shop. That's what Harley Davidson dealerships do. They send owners of anything but the current engines design away. All those owners are given no choice but to find a competent Harley shop. It doesn't mean the bike can't be fixed. It means that dealership can't fix it*

* I'm sure someone there could, but it's a business decision. They can make money off of every newer bike repair. Older stuff sometimes takes more to fix due to deterioration and harder to find parts.

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[quote=special-K;9114088]Funny they didn't take the job @ what they quoted per hr. $100 and they said 3 hrs

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[quote=special-K;9114088] Not all Harley dealers are like that. My oldest brother is Harley mechanic at a dealer and he has worked on some seriously old machines.

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[quote=67 twins;9114135]That has been my experience. Pretty much any bike that is 2 generations of engine old, is "too old" for the dealers. They tell you to find an independent bike shop.
They won't even touch an Evo around here.
My kind of old is Knucklehead. If you show up at almost any bike shop with one of those, they all come out to see it. Of course, mine was hand built by me and I wouldn't let anyone touch it anyway.
That's another thing, custom. The dealers really don't want anything other than the way it was built in the mothership, but that's not really surprising, car dealers do that too.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

Couple of thoughts parts wise.
If you have a small engine shop local they might not be able to get the parts you need but they might know a local "hoarder" that may have what you need.
In Alexandria MN there is a boat museum and they have a ton of restored boats and motors.
Contact them and see who they could put you in contact with that might have the old parts you need.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

I borrowed this pic from the web.

Back in the mid 70's I worked with a guy that was retiring and moving to Arkansas. He had a 14-foot Aluminum Boat with a trailer made from 2" Ridged Electrical Conduit and a Scott Atwater Outboard on it just like this one, He didn't want to make any more trips than possible back there, so he asked me if I wanted it.

Hell yeah! I'll take it! I used that thing for probably 4-5 years before the bottom end froze up on it. I tried many boat shops around to get it repaired but simply no parts available was the standard answer.
It sat under my work bench for probably another 2-3 years when my neighbor across the road bought it for a wall hanger in his shop. Last time I was over there it's still hanging there on the wall.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

I like vintage outboard motors. Back in my early youth some of our area lakes rented 16' Jon boats (aluminum flat bottom ) for $1 per day. They seated 4 people. My Dad used to fish in one with 1 1/2 hp motor. It was slow but it beat paddling. They went all over the lake with it. That was late 40's to mid 50's. It was in 1959 that Dad stepped up and bought the new 5 hp Sea King. By the 70's guys began to own boats of their own so the lakes discontinued renting boats. About that time I bought my first boat and built my own trailer and I have owned my own ever since. Dad bought a new boat, trailer and 15 hp Johnson w/electric start after he retired and of course a truck to pull it. He bought a new Ford pkup in 1955 and traded it away a couple years later. He didn't own another pkup until he retired and bought the 1991 Chevy I have now.
Back to my original posting about my Sea King motor.
I bought a carb rebuild kit w/float for a mid 80's Johnson/Evinrude 5 hp motor off ebay for about $10 just going by the pic only. I just got it in and that float is black plastic as it appeared and it is almost identical in size as my original one and I do believe it will work in my 1959 carb. I'm stoked about it.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

Here's my Sea King - my grandfather bought it new in the early 50's from Montgomery Ward. When my Dad was a kid, their family vacations were fishing on Herrington Lake in central KY. He didn't care for fishing as much as my grandfather so he spent his time cruising the lake in a jonboat with this motor. Based on his stories, he made it sound like he was in a jet boat or something, but I guess to a 7-8 year old boy, the old Sea King moved him along pretty good. When I was in high school, I had it on our 14 foot MonArk jonboat and left it tied up all summer on the Kentucky river near our house. Me and my buddies blasted all over the river that summer in that setup, fishing, swimming and just having a good time.

My Dad passed in May, so I've been cleaning out his property and there the Sea King sits, along with a 1956 Johnson that was also my grandfathers, as well as the jonboat.

Re: Old outboard motors
 

Here are some links that may help you out- the write ups on Evinrude/Johnson motors helped me out a lot with my outboards. I'm not familiar with any Sea King motors but there may be something here that can help.
https://www.leeroysramblings.com/OB%...r_repairs.html

https://www.leeroysramblings.com/Out...20related.html

https://www.leeroysramblings.com/His...outboards.html

http://www.laingsoutboards.com/referencelibrary.html

Gale Force ;
Evinrude and Montgomery Wards started an association in the early 1930s that would continue for many years. At first, leftover Evinrudes would be re-badged as Sea King outboards – and with the country in the throws of the Great Depression there were a lot of leftovers! Soon small changes in the gas tank and trim started to really set them apart from the Evinrude line. Evinrude also worked with Eaton's Department Stores in Canada using the same formula for their Viking motors.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the department store business became very important to OMC. After WWII Evinrude/OMC split off their private brand business into the separate Gale Products Division at Galesburg, Illinois. Gale had their own Buccaneer brand sold by Gale dealers and mail order through Spiegel's, they also made outboards for “house brands” such as Atlas Royal (Atlas Tire stores), Spiegle Department Stores under the Brooklure name, along with the Goodyear Sea-Bee. They also made the following private brands: Sea King (Montgomery Wards), Atlas Royal (Atlas Supply – sold at Esso and others), AMC Saber, Hiawatha (Gambles Skogomo) and Sea Bee (Goodyear Tire Stores).

For the most part Gale motors had unique powerheads from their Johnson & Evinrude brothers. Some engineering features such as the gear case and legs were shared – usually a year or two after the flagship lines.

One odd thing, was that Gale-built motors also featured a fuel pump, whereas the “flagship brand” motors still used the older style pressurized fuel tanks. Otherwise this motor is very much a typical OMC Big Twin outboard and shares many parts with its Evinrude/Johnson sisters.

Gale stayed in business until 1964.

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That verifies my idea of shared parts among the manufacturers during that time. It worked for mine. Neat reading.

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When I looked into parts for my Sea King I learned it was made by Johnson but they all were made by either them, Evinrude, and maybe one other

When I lived in Florida one winter (78/79 I think) I lived up the Indian River (Intercoastal Waterway) from Jensen Beach/Stuart area, along the river. The other half of the house was rented by a test boat driver for OMC. The other two test drivers were Sam Evinrude's grandsons. You'd see these three boats haulin' butt everywhere in all weather. They were instructed to treat the boats like they weren't theirs. If something was going to break they wanted them to break it. I was fortunate enough to meet Sam Evinrude, the small engine genius and founder and/or owner of multiple corporations. Just a regular guy like me and you, if you met him.