Large lot of 70's and 80's Johnson and Evinrude outboards

[thill]

How you list on FB Marketplace and CL makes a huge difference. I think two things are key.
1) The motor needs to be clean, good-running and tested, meaning that it MUST be a good motor.
2) A detailed description with photos and video. Fuzzy pics are a HUGE turn-off!

Over the years, customers who can't sell a motor or boat bring them to me, and so far, I've sold every one of them at or for more than what they were asking.

What is my process?

1. First, fix anything needed. Often a carb cleaning is in order.
2. Then I clean it inside and out, maybe even touching up paint. Clean is King!
3. Then I take many clear photos and video. ALWAYS include video of it starting and running.
4. Write a complete description, ALWAYS offer to run and do a live compression test

I want people to feel as if they were seeing it in person. Generally, they sell quickly for more than what my customer had been asking.

Sometimes, people drive very long distances to buy from me, as far as Cape Cod. I always ask why, and the answer is always because they felt confident that I would sell them a good motor. They are correct. I always make sure they run well before listing, so I am confident that I am sending them off with a really good motor. I guess that confidence shows through in the listing.

Maybe your area is tougher, but if you are selling good motors, I think you will do okay.

 

[mirrocraft16]

If I'm looking for a motor on CL or FB, I'm only looking at the overall condition. I assume it needs a w/p, plugs, and a carb cleaning. Every motor does, even one I ran last fall. Gas today is pure crap and there's no way I'd trust any carb, or anyone else's rebuild to not lean out and kill the motor. I'd far prefer to find one 'as left' or as found.

You also can't expect someone who's got 200 motors in a warehouse to go through each and every one to get it up and running replacing parts that may well need to be replaced before it finally sells next year sometime.

VA must be very different then NJ, up here things sit forever on CL, even if their free. More than once I've found items buried way down the list on the last page, that have been listed forever that never got a reply. I bought a minty clean still in the box Honda 100, (10hp), from around 1985 or so for $100. The guy had great pics, he clearly described it in his title, yet he sounded amazed that someone replied. I sent him a phone number, he called me back in 2 minutes. I hopped i the truck and went and got it about an hour and a half away north of me. I ended up buying a bunch of things off the guy who was trying to sell off stuff for an upcoming move. I got a top of the line vintage Radio Shack receiver, and two matching 15" speakers and a Pioneer turntable for $200, and a new in the box 1987 Minn Kota 3hp trolling motor for $50. All stuff he had listed for months but hadn't gotten a single email.

The OP is in for a long ordeal selling them at any price, and from what I've seen, if someone doesn't have $500, they likely don't have $100 either. However I certainly would not give them away either. They will sell its just going to take the right buyer who's not flat broke. $4/gal gas, and $8/lb hamburger and such is really what the problem is. People can't afford anything right now.

For me, if I don't get fair value for something it'll sit, I'd rather have a good motor I can use than dump it for less than i can buy one when I need it.

This is one of the only motors on CL right now and if what the ads says is true, it don't have much life left in it if its only got 90lbs of compression. (I have the same motor and mine has 148 on all four). Never in saltwater but in an area where there's nothing but saltwater, in a state with a gas motor ban in fresh water and only four lakes that allow 10hp motors.
90HP Johnson - boats - by owner - marine sale - craigslist
The problem is that this is the only one listed, there is nothing else, and certainly nothing else cheaper that's not outright junk or blown up.

The most popular motor here is any 9.9 or similar motor. two strokes are cheaper so they have the best chance of actually selling here. Larger motors sell but not very often. Its not a matter of what its worth but how much the buyer has to spend lately. If all a guy has to spend on a boat or motor is $400, then hes only going to buy a $400 motor. If that means its junk, they usually don't figure that out till their adrift in the bay with it. For me, i take a compression gauge with me, if its got compressions, and the lower unit shifts and feels good, and there's no broken bits off the skeg or cav plate, I'm not too concerned about the carb or w/p, because there's no way I'd hang and use a motor without pulling the leg off it and looking for myself, and if its coming off, its getting a new impeller while I'm there. The same with the carb, its coming apart no matter what just to be sure its not full of dirt, rust or corrosion. It don't matter if its 40 or only 4 months old. if its seen gas, the carb is coming off.

 

[thill]

So NJ is a hotspot for cheap outboards. That is interesting, but not the greatest news for the OP.

I see nice motors in NJ on Marketplace, but the prices are so low that it seems suspicious. I want to upgrade the current 150 Evinrude on my 22' Offshore (which runs great,) to a 4-stroke, but they are asking ~$9-10K for anything with less than 1,000 hours around here. I would rather buy new for $14k with warranty than pay that much for a 10-year-old motor with a thousand hours on it.

Then I see the same motors in NJ for $5k.
I'll be honest. It's a bit scary driving 5 hours away with a pocket full of cash, to what appears to be a higher-crime area for a deal that seems too good to be true. I don't want to get ripped off or worse.

But I digress. Back to the original topic, if the OP, Freeisforme wants to bring a trailer full of good motors to VA, I would sell them all, and I'm confident I would get him a minimum of $500 each for anything over 9.9 HP, and I would still make enough to be worth my time. I sell every good motor I post, with no exceptions, usually for my asking price.

Serious offer. I only have 5-6 good ones ready for spring, so it would work out just fine.

 

[thill]

Hey... I have a customer right now who is looking for a 70 HP OMC outboard.

I just read that you ran some of your 70's. Not sure he will drive that far, but let me know what area you are in, and I'll try to send him your way.

Check your personal messages.

-Tony

 

[mirrocraft16]

So NJ is a hotspot for cheap outboards. That is interesting, but not the greatest news for the OP.

I see nice motors in NJ on Marketplace, but the prices are so low that it seems suspicious. I want to upgrade the current 150 Evinrude on my 22' Offshore (which runs great,) to a 4-stroke, but they are asking ~$9-10K for anything with less than 1,000 hours around here. I would rather buy new for $14k with warranty than pay that much for a 10-year-old motor with a thousand hours on it.

Then I see the same motors in NJ for $5k.
I'll be honest. It's a bit scary driving 5 hours away with a pocket full of cash, to what appears to be a higher-crime area for a deal that seems too good to be true. I don't want to get ripped off or worse.

But I digress. Back to the original topic, if the OP, Freeisforme wants to bring a trailer full of good motors to VA, I would sell them all, and I'm confident I would get him a minimum of $500 each for anything over 9.9 HP, and I would still make enough to be worth my time. I sell every good motor I post, with no exceptions, usually for my asking price.

Serious offer. I only have 5-6 good ones ready for spring, so it would work out just fine.

The problem here is that freshwater doesn't allow gas motors. Gas engines can only be run in tidal waters and about four lakes throughout the state. Two are in south Jersey. One is contaminated and fish can't be eaten from there, although there's a fairly decent population of bass and catfish in that lake.
This means that most of our small motors are being run in brackish or saltwater and unless you find one from someone who was fanatic about flushing it out after ever use, most are pretty corroded up. For me, I always launch well up stream and make the ride to where I fish, that means the motor gets flushed out on the ride home up river a ways. If I launch in the salt, I'll make a point of stopping at one of the freshwater lakes and dunking the boat for a quick ride and back out to wash off any salt. I can't run the motor, or at least your not supposed to but a quick blast and shut down never hurt anyone and my boat has a trolling motor on each end so I can easily power in the sweetwater legally, although slowly.
My main motor is from 1978, my smaller motor from 1995, both are spotless as far as corrosion but I'm a strong believer in products like Salt X and similar to neutralize the salt, even on the inside of the hull and fittings. The biggest issue I tend to deal with is cedar water staining at the water line.

Price wise, a good motor, to the right buyer in the spring should sell for top dollar here, especially once they see the cost of a new motor. Those motors though are usually short lived because those who pay those top dollar prices are generally those who have no boating experience and they end up running them without oil or not doing any winter maintenance and they kill the motor in short order.

When you need to find a good used motor, you would be lucky to find one in even fair condition for under $800 or so, more for larger motors. An $800 motors is generally a decent looking motor with good compression, you would expect to have to replace the water pump and go through the carb at the very least. It'll have a prop, but its not likely going to match your boat.
The problem is thought that fewer and fewer are boating or fishing these days, they've made it difficult to register a boat by closing down most of the local DMV offices, and most boats and trailers need to be done at a regional office, over an hour away.
It leads to either fewer boaters or a ton of unregistered boats. This action put a lot of boats into storage back in 2020 and most never came back out. Little by little those are turning up on CL and FB.
Two strokes are still king, while most people would want a four stroke, they're still too expensive, with used motors bringing as much as $200 more than a two stroke, and many older boats, (which most are), can't handle the same horse power in a four stroke motor due to weight. My Starcraft SF14 is a good example, its rated for 40hp in 1993 on the plate, If I hung a 40hp four stroke on it it would sink. Yet a 40hp 2 stroke is no problem. (I tried a 30hp two stroke on it, a tiller steer 3cyl Suzuki, but I had less than a 1/2" of freeboard at the top of the transom with me at the tiller handle. with no battery or fuel in the boat.
Yet the 35hp two stroke I run on it is perfect.
I hoard 25-35hp OMC motors, I've saved myself about 15 of them so far.
I sell anything smaller. (I keep one 4hp and one 9.5hp for kicker motors), but the rest get sold.
I just picked up three minty clean early 15hp Johnson motors way out in PA off CL, the guy had one listed but when I got there he had three. I made a package deal for all three, two short shaft tiller motors and one long shaft remote with tiller handle. All three fired right up even in the cold the other day in the garage. All three idled fine, and pumped water. They'll be for sale as soon as the weather breaks. Right now they won't bring $10 here, but when people get spring fever, the prices go sky high.

 

[Crazyboat]

I haven't read though this thread yet, but, ya got any photos?

 

[freeisforme]

Yes. I can get $500+ for almost anything that runs well, even an old 70's motor. 15 HP always outsell the 9.9's, of course.

A good-running 2010 Mercury 9.9 would quickly sell for $950 around here! More like $1,200, if it was in cosmetically good condition.

This area (Mid-atlantic region, between Richmond and Washington DC) seems to have higher prices than others. I sometimes have to travel over the mountains to get a good deal. Over there, (W. VA in particular) prices are much lower as well as southwest VA.

In years past the later four stroke motors bring nearly what they cost new if you wait it out. As long as new motors keep going up, they seem to pay more and more for the used ones. I sold a 2003 Mercury 4 stroke. short shaft tiller last spring for $1,500, it was gone in two weeks. It sold by word of mouth though, not CL. All the CL buyers wanted it for $300.
Since 2020 people won't drive far around here most won't go 10 miles any more. Not that I needed another motor but I trash picked an older Yamaha 9.9hp four stroke that looks like new, but has a spark plug broke off in the head.
The head is a mess. I looks like some ham fist has been beating on it with a hammer and he's got the plug hole and remains the plug all bunged up. Its going to need a head or some welding and some new threads but the thing looks almost new otherwise. My trash guys told me about it and I ran right over and grabbed it.
If nothing else its a pile of good parts otherwise. If I get the time, I'll pull the head and see how bad the inside of the hole looks, its likely worth fixing and its a long shaft with electric start too.

 

[captain cletis]

I recently inherited a garage full of outboards. An uncle who I suppose was a believer in the thought that you can never have enough spare motors left me roughly 200 or so in his garage.
They range from 4hp up to 135hp with most being in the 40-115 range.
I think a lot of it was because he had a buddy who back then owned a marina and repair shop and he got deals on good used motors all the time. Plus he bought anything that ran so long as it didn't need much work.
Most have been sitting for 10 or so years, or more. Most are super clean for their age being from the middle of PA.
I would venture to guess that every one of them would need a water pump impeller and a carb overhaul, but that's just annual maintenance.
I went through a bunch of them and all have excellent compression and he didn't save junk. There area few parts motors but they're marked as such, and all of those are Chrysler or Mercury motors. There's also a handful of lower units and a couple of odd Mercury motors in the mix as well. I think I saw a couple of older Keikhaeffer 400's (40hp) in the mix, and a few 3hp singles from the 60's or so, but other than a few 10 and 20hp Chrysler motors and one West Bend, the majority are all OMC.
There was two new 9.9hp four stroke Mercury motors but those staying with me.
I'd keep them all if I had the room but we're talking about four garage bays full of motors, all on various racks and stands he had built.
As someone who runs only 14 and 16ft aluminum boats, I have zero use for the larger motors and those will get sold first.

A few that I've listed got zero attention, not even an email. If they're nothing but scrap these days I may be better of just digging a hole and pushing them in it. No matter what, I'll have to load them all up and haul them 300 miles to my place to sell them, its too far to go back and forth if I list them up there. What I may do is load the contents of the place into a couple of trailers and haul it all back to sell so as not to end up being forced to dump anything in a rush if the property sells.

I basically would consider most of these as 'viable' motors, needing the basic maintenance to put them in use again.
There's a few with repair issues, I saw a couple with missing tiller grips, one with a tiller arm removed but hanging from a zip tie, (59 40hp). one with a chipped skeg, a couple with the wrong color lower units, and a few with broken recoil handles where the rope is pulled through or the handle is broken apart from age.

Out of the whole lot, I'm keeping two Mercury four strokes, four 35hp Johnsons, and four Honda 100 four strokes, and I'm not sure yet if I want the Honda motors or not, but a few of them look new. There's also a newer, 2000 something Honda 9.9hp that needs some work, mainly the paint is falling off the cover and the tiller linkage is off the carb somehow, and likely a water pump and carb cleaning of course. It does have good compression, but I have no clue where he got that one, its far newer than most of these motors.
There's a mix of long and short shaft motors as well.

A few have told me that the only way to sell them would be to tear them all apart and list the parts on eBay, but that could take years to sell off and I'd feel like I'm parting out perfectly good motors.

Good older motors can be scarce here. In an area where most motors live their life in saltwater, combined with owners who do nothing to clean or keep them from turning to a corroded mess, and new owners buying cheap used boats and motors who burn up their first few motors not knowing any better about 2 strokes or maintenance, the number of used motors that are worth owning dwindles fast.
Add in the fact that most boaters simply cannot afford a brand new motor making a used motor their only option.
The most I've ever spent for any boat or motor over the years was never more than I was carrying in my pocket at the time. Just the same, not many were turn key, but most took little more than a water pump and some basic maintenance to make them good boats and motors again.
A good many boat owners don't know a spark plug from a drain plug, those type of owners probably should never buy a used boat because every aspect of owning that boat is going to cost them a ton of money. Most marinas these days are well over $150/hr.

A neighbor of mine got quoted $2k at some dealer after his 2019 Mer 25hp sat through the pandemic and wouldn't start. He brought it home and parked it. He told me he was saving for a new motor because he couldn't see spending $2k on a motor he only paid $3k for new. He said he bought it new in early 2019, used it twice, then it sat for three years and wouldn't start.

I told him to grab a carb kit, fuel filter, and impeller for it and I fixed it for about $60. If I hadn't intervened, chances are he'd have dumped it on some phone ap for cheap. The dealer had him convinced it was likely best to just buy a new motor. They may have been hoping for a clean trade in and a big sale but he didn't have the money so all they got was the $100 minimum charge for checking it out. I picked up a 15hp Yamaha last year that some dealer told the owner the motor wasn't worth fixing because it had sat for 8 years. It woudn't start.
I found two cracked spark plugs and I went through the carb and replaced the water pump impeller and it was fine. I got it for $100 on CL. and spent $70 on it. I sold it for $1,700 just before Christmas to a guy who drove up from VA. He said his options were buy used or nothing, a new motor would have been double and the one I sold was super clean and likely hardly ever used. (Most boat motors see very little actual running time, most die sitting not running. My boat is a 1979, I've owned it since 1985, its got an hour meter on the dash, and in 45 years its got only 460 hours of run time on the 35hp motor. Its lost no compression since when I bought it and sat four or five of those years over all that time. The reality is that most boats don't get out more than a few times a year, and when they do they're not running 100% of the time. For me I launch, run out to where I fish, anchor up then maybe move a few times over a few mile area, then head in at dusk. I only run if the weather and wind are favorable, and its not my only boat so the hours are low. On average, most people work during the week, and get one day on the weekend to take the boat out, then, in much of this area, the boating season is mainly late March to June, then Sept and early Oct. Maybe five or six weekends a year, then figure in how many of those weekends get rained out, or other things arrise and most are lucky to get out 5 or 6 times a year, and most don't go far. If your lucky, they put the boat away property, but most don't, the boat gets parked after June, the summer it too hot to fish for many, and if they don't get out in the fall, it just sits till next spring. About half are then elminated when they won't start, they can't afford to pay someone to fix it, so it sits until they realize they'll never be able to afford to fix it and the back registration is more than they can sell the boat for. Unless a cheap running motor falls into their hands, they're done.

Those of us who fix our own boats and know how to put a boat to bed for the winter, don't realize how so many boats get into the shape we find them in. I hear it all the time, We used bought it and used it until the the first kid came, then they were broke and couldn't afford it, or they bought it when the retired and their health went bad and it sat, or "It looked like a good deal but it died the first time out and they wanted $3k to fix it. so it sat".

The number of motors that survive in any sort of usuable condition is slim, most end up seized, either from sitting for decades, or from unknowing new owners who don't know to mix oil in the fuel.

Usually when you find a guy who has accumulated a load of motors though, they likely knew what they were buying and either saw that motor as an easy fix or good runner as it sat. I've gotten some decent deals off that type of owner, if and when they finally decide to sell off their hoard of motors.

For me, if I need a motor, I'd gladly spend $500-$1000 for a motor that may need even a few hundred dollars in parts to be $100% because its far cheaper than anything I can buy new or from a dealer in turn key shape.
One dealer I was at back in June had a 1983 50hp Johnson on the showroom floor for $2,200 plus installation. The hang tag said that shop installation was required to get that price, carryout was not an option.

Do you have any 120s, 130s or 140s from like 1987-1992?