I had.... a problem with my outboard for the last month. I was approaching my mooring then my outboard just quit. I picked up the nearest mooring to me and started troubleshooting trying to fiqure out why it quit. I just had the carb overhualed during the off season and received a good bill of health for my 84 Mercury 7.5E. I finally got it started but it suffered a servere loss of power. It was acting like it was starving for fuel. So I did the obvious the following weekend, changed the spark plugs, filled the tank with fresh fuel. But to no avail it just would not give out the same power as it used too. Then I figured that the fuel line must be either sucking some air or the prime bulb was not allowing it to get enough fuel above 1/4 throttle. After changing out the fuel line and all the fitting it still acted like it was straving for fuel. Then the following weekend I noticed by chance that my throttle lever was cracked. So what was happening was that the throttle was closing it's self when I tried to open it. I jury rigged the throttle lever so that it had a good grip on the shaft and low and behold it now runs like it did at the begining of the season. I was getting ready to replace the old 2 stroke with a 4 stroke, but now I think I give it a couple of more seasons.