So, here's a follow up. Whoever said these were good engines sure knows that they are talking about! So I had to see if a key I'd bought fits the ignition switch, it did. I had the marina pump out all the old fuel as suggested. I'm up at the boat checking to see if the key works, put it, turn to on, works, everything lights up. Great! I'm thinking, OK, I have to go buy fuel, let me see if the ignition switch works, might have to buy a switch. I'll just pop it a bit and see if the switch activates the starter, then I'll go get everything I need to start working on this engine to see what I have to do to get it running. So I just pop the switch over and it does a quick little spin of the motor - the darned thing started! Holy cow! I'm thinking I haven't even checked out the accelerator lever to see if it works yet, I hope I can stop this thing! I jump over to the accelerator lever and push it to off and sure enough the motor stops. Now that is a problem I love to have! So then I went and got everything properly set up, put 5 gallons of good fuel in it, started the engine with the water pump hose in a flat pan with water being fed into it from a hose. So the pump had to suck from the pan with no water pressure to push - heck I don't even have to change the impeller!
So here's a question - Everything I've read says these engines have a lot of vibration and noise associated with them. But I ran this engine for probably an hour, ran it up and down at a whole range of RPMs and I can't say I found anywhere that seemed to have any vibrations I'd consider even remotely undesirable. I had the front stairs off, I was watching the engine, sure didn't seem to vibrate much to me at any RPM I ran it at. I ran it up pretty high, maybe not max RPMs it can go, but I got pretty close. Does it need to be in the water to see the vibrations?
dj
