A friend is bringing a 1960s 40 HP Evinrude electric shift motor to me that hasn’t been run for abut 30 years to see if it can be made to run.  A dealer told his grandfather years ago that there is no compression (we will see! – I’ve heard that line before when dealers didn’t want to work on an old motor).   My friend tried to pull it over by hand recently and said it is seized.   It has electric shift.  Am I remembering right that someone said here a while back that these motors  lock up in the gearcase when no battery is applied and the ignition switch is off?   or should it pull over  when dormant with no battery?  (assuming the throttle is not up too high to lock the recoil).   I’ve never worked on an electric shift model before.

Hoping the claim of no compression is just a head gasket blown between the cylinders.

Thx,

Dave