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I have another thread going about a different motor so I am going to say thanks in advance for any advice. This one is my buddy's 18 mariner that he has on his 13 sport that he uses for duck hunting, with the season starting Dec. 5th. He thinks it is a 1984. Serial number is 6618436. He let it sit for a year but we got it cranked and running about a month ago. Today we got it cranked with starting spray but it killed after about 10 minutes. We pulled the carb, cleaned it and it ran again for about 5 minutes and died. We found that algae or something had got into the tank, nasty sludge, so we pulled the carb and cleaned it thoroughly again and put it on a new tank and nothing. Neither spark plug is firing. It is a pull start and it has no safety kill switch. You kill it by pressing a red button at the end of the tiller. On the way home it occured to me that it may not crank if it is in gear and that it may have been engaged when we were putting the carb back on. Any deas on where to go from here?

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I believe that the tiller switch shorts out the magnetic pickup so that it can't send a surge to the coil causing the spark. No spark could mean a bad coil, a bad magnetic pickup, bad tiller switch or even a bad plug wire. I'm not an outboard mechanic but I think the plug wire, coil and the switch are probably the only components you can check with the flywheel on.

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Thanks for the help. I have dealt with fuel delivery problems often but never the spark side. I will start with the plug wires and work back. Thanks again.