A thank you very very much to all of you who have responded to my 1967 3hp Evinrude ignition problem. The motor, after tinkering with the ignition system and rebuilding the carburetor is purring along just fine now. From your responses it should be no surprise that dirty points and poor caps were the problem. I started with new Sierra points but the slots for the adjusting screws were noticeably wider than the American made OMC old points, the metal of the Sierra points bent easily, and the points were not parallel. So I threw out the Sierra points and put the old OMC points back in — they looked great, no signs of arcing, and the point surfaces were parallel and in alignment. The most important point (pun intended) was CLEANING the points. The advise of pulling some 400 wet/dry sandpaper through the points then pulling alcohol soaked paper through did the trick — contacts and timing were easy to adjust after that. I bought an ESR tester and with a good multimeter concluded that the old caps and the new Sierra caps were weak. I sourced some NOS American made caps that tested OK and now the engine runs fine. Thank you all for your help.
Now on to the impeller and lower unit. The impeller is easy to source, not so much the seal kit for the angled gear box.
JT
