West Bend 40hp outboard

[wiscoboater]

Hello gents,
My Father recently passed away and I’m left with an 83 year accumulation of boating, fishing and general miscellaneous water fun things. I have a 40hp West Bend outboard with controls and wiring harness. It’s a Golden Shark, not sure of year yet. With all the sorting and getting his house ready to sell I have not had much time to look it over. This motor holds a lot of fond memories of my Dad and our time together. So this winter I’m going to restore the old girl along with the boat it is on. Can anyone give me any background on the West Bend motors? Also, does anyone know of a parts vendor that may have parts or knowledge on the brand. I have to admit I’m a Johnson and Evinrude guy, so the West Bend is something I am not familiar with.

Thank you for any help or advice,
Wisco boater

[tom-in-ri]

Sorry about your Dad. And glad you are pulling that project together. I don’t know West Bend but this 1959 ad paints a compelling story why everyone should own one.
http://www.fiberglassics.com/library/Fi … a59001.jpg

[raglover]

It is a fine motor. It is the predecessor to Chrysler later forc by U.S. Marine and then force Mercury after that. Laings outboard has some parts. Also may have luck with some other Chrysler parts sources.

I think it s great you are keeping it around to live on. Think that motor is pretty straight forward with points simple carb and there are members that can make impellers if you send the hub. I get my seals from a bearing house in town…..same skf/cr seals that they made for the manufactures should the lower unit need a seal. I found that the cr/skf site will even cross the old Omc numbers to cr numbers.

Good luck

[retiredoz]

Just idly glancing at the specs in my handy-dandy motor bible, it appears West Bend built that as a 40-hp ’59-’62. It then morphed into a 45-hp in ’63, and continued by Chrysler as a 45-hp until Force came along in ’84 or so. Given Chrysler’s propensity for not mucking up a good thing, I’ll bet there’s a lot of similarity, although probably not identical. My old Sierra book lists 18-5149 and 18-5169 for points and cond, respectively if you have the Morse mag,
or 18-5162 and 18-5238 for the Wico mag.

[wiscoboater]

Thank you to all of you.

[outboardnut]

there is some guy looking for one on here
He is making some kind of Museum in west bend

[wiscoboater]

I got a chance to look the motor over a bit today. It is missing the electric starter. The bracket is there and the wiring. Does anyone have a part number for the starter? or is the starter shared with any other motor brands? Model # is 40161 and from the limited info I could find, seems to be a 1961. I found a manual for it on Ebay this morning and ordered it. Looking under the hood it sure is different from my J/E motors. This should be a good learning experience.

[retiredoz]

One minor point not to ignore is the positive-ground electrical setup. If you have the alternator, the rectifier will get damaged by reversed polarity, it says here..

[wiscoboater]

I remember reading something about the positive ground set up. Would this require a reverse polarity starter? Or is the polarity reversed inside the motor wiring somehow?

[retiredoz]

I’ll leave it up to experts to explain this, but my thought is that reversing polarity simply reverses the rotation of the motor. As long as the Bendix turns the right way, doesn’t matter all that much ?

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