anyone on here familiar wit the older merc motors????...i have a 1978 merc 50 hp........great compression and gas and all just no fire in holes 1 and 4 so i tried changing the coil and nothin and then the power pack and still nothing but the power pack has a wire missing and i look at it on the other motor and it runs to stuff that isnt on the other(one has steering and power trim)
the missing wire is on the right set of connections and its the middle one..........would this cause coils 1 and 4 to not fire??......................and 2 and 3 fire just fine!!!!!......one of them put me on my azz

Are there two Power Packs on that Engine? If so, then it is the power Pack. If you wouldn't have any fire, then it would be the stator.

that wire prolly doesnt matter, if it does it prolly needs to be grounded. check your trigger also

If the stator was bad you wouldn't have any fire.

ok well that rules out that
how do i tell if the switch is bad?

ok so i just got off the phone with my buddy about these motors........we bought one that ran and one that didnt for 500 but the one that runs is set up for a steering console.....so after tlking to him he now wants to just make the runnning motor run again and just put the tiller arm on it.........so heres my question since i have never done it before and havnt looked at it much........how hard would it be to put the tiller arm on the othe motor?

maybe your wires leadin to the sparkplug cap are bad?

is that old enough to have points?