Well.. I’ve stumbled upon another one. This time it is a Johnson Seahorse JW-17, 3 hp.
I promised myself (and well, my girlfriend!) that I wouldn’t buy another one in a while, since I’ve already got quite a few engines. But.. Sometimes you get those rare, but loved, unassuming phonecalls. This time it started something like this:

Rriinngg-rriingg
-Hello?

– "Yeah, hi there, you like those old outboards, don’t you?"

– Yeah, a little.. (Me trying to hide my enthusiasm!)

-" well, I’ve got this old, probably 60’s, Johnson 3 hp that you can have if you like"

– Okay, nice. What’s the asking pri.. (Caller interrupts me mid-sentence)

-"never mind, just come get it!"

And the best part was that the caller lived a mile from my house! I immediately jumped in my car and went to get it.
The caller told me he hadn’t run it for the last five years, and couldn’t promise that it worked. Well, that is really no problem since my passion is tinkering with these engines!

When I got it back home, I proceeded to check for spark, compression, all that usual, and found that all was well. I gave it some fresh gas and some starting gas and it fired on the third pull and ran perfectly!
It is complete except for the bottom shroud (the lower part of the ‘egg’), but that’s no big deal considering the price was 0€.

Here are some pics of it.
By the way, I have no idea why it has stains of green paint on it. Oh, if these engines could talk!

And here it is with its older sister