Thread: Johnson outboards - Any good?

I have a slightly older Evinrude 115 hp two stroke outboard. I have owned it for around 20 years and never had any issues with it - and it tends to only be used over the summer months. It will mostly depend on whether they have looked after it, flushed it properly, and serviced it regularly.

I had one issue with mine once when we headed off down Queen Charlotte Sound and the motor stopped. It would start again but not develop any power. I got towed back in and had a Waikawa company have a look at it. All they found was an excess of two stroke oil in the carb, which they couldn’t explain but cleaned it out and it gave no further problems.

The mechanic did comment that these motors have an optical system to trigger the spark and that these were becoming hard to get. He suggested that if mine failed it would be the end of my outboard, but on returning home I searched for this part on eBay and it wasn’t hard to find one.

This looks to be the same motor as mine, but with a more modern cowl and a different badge.