I answered an ad which a buddy of mine pointed out to me yesterday. It was some old guy in his 80's who's come into some health issues.
His daughter is trying to get a head start on clearing out all his things that he's accumulated.
I was told he had a garage full of outboards and that he at one time owned a boat and outboard dealer somewhere up north.
I called the number, got the daughter on the phone and found out the place was closer than I thought, maybe a 20 minute ride or so.
I headed over there with my car and trailer not knowing what to expect other than being told that none of them have been run or in the water in at least 10 years, some maybe a lot more.
When I got there the woman met me outside where her and some kid were sorting through old books and magazines tossing them in a recycle tub. She leads me into the garage, which looked ancient, as did the rather run down Victorian style house that hadn't seen paint in decades.
I was in shock as soon as I walked in, the place is wall to wall outboards, ages that range from the late 60's to late 80's or so.
The majority of them are OMC big twins, 77-83 models with a few later 30hp motors. There's a row of 6hp motors that's got to be 20 foot long, a few older 50's era Johnsons, 18-25hp, and about 30 late 60's early 70's 9.5hp OMC motors.
There's only a few mercury motors, all are 35-40hp twins from the 70's or early 80's.
There's a few 80's model OMC V4's, mostly 90 and 115hp models, a few 115hp Mercury motors from the 90's, and a half dozen OMC triples all mid 80's models. That's just the tip of the iceberg, and I'd take up pages here trying to list them all.
Off the bat, there's no less than 500 motors there.
With one big issue at hand, nearly every last one I tried with a recoil was seized. The old guy was in the house and I talked to him for a bit and he said every motor ran when he put it where it sits, but he had a major stroke and hasn't been out of the house in 12 years.
Its an all or nothing deal, take them all or don't bother. What surprises me is that the garage is dry, on high ground with a metal roof, it don't leak, and its not damp. I did pull a few off the rack and tried harder to turn them with the cover off but the few I tried were locked tight.
While no doubt even parts are worth something my experience lately with selling used motors here, even later model running motors is not good. Cash for anything is hard to come by lately and boats seem to have become the first thing they forgot about.
Moving them all is doable but storing them is another thing, they will pack my two sheds, both storage trailers and likely my basement until I either sell or tear them down for parts. With the glut of parts I see on fleabay lately, I'm not too confident things will sell fast enough to bother. In the end, its all still worth scrap, removed the glass covers, load like cord wood, and take them right to the scrap yard for a quick payout. I just really hate to toss what could possibly be a lot of good parts, expecially lower units and carbs. Nothing 'looks' corroded, and most motors are super clean looking but stuck is stuck and its not often a motor that's seized comes out of it 100% even if soaking it frees it up.
The first one i tried was one of the older 18hp motors, but there's zero movement even when i tried to pry the flywheel teeth around with a big screwdriver I found on the wall. There's also a good number of unmarked lower units, piled up in the corner, probably a hundred or so.
I saw no electric shift models, or anything from that era in those sizes. The larger motors are all newer than 1980 or so,
After checking about 25 motors all I tried were seized.
I'm torn between just going there and hauling them for scrap, or going there and bringing them all home and taking the time to break them all down for parts and taking only the easy parts, lowers, carbs, covers, etc.
This is the fourth place I've found like this in the last two years, but by far the closest. I had something similar about 80 miles from me about 10 years ago but all those motors were antiques and nearly every last one ran as found. This is very different.
I still have most of the motors I went and got way out in PA a few months ago, the few I did list garnered no attention when I had them on FB and CL last month.
I'm seeing repeat ads that have been up for years for the same motor over and over again. There's a few that look super promising for cheap but they still go unsold. particularly over in PA. FB seems to have become a dumping ground for dead ads or unsellable items because the response rate to inquiries is about 1 out of 50. CL is closer to 50/50 but there's been fewer and fewer items listed there lately. I guess people stopped trying to sell things? There's really no other option here other than a few free papers that don't allow pics and you have to rely on someone actually picking up that paper at the supermarket and reading through 10k unclassified ads and finding your outboard for sale.
Another thing I saw there besides the motors and the two huge tool boxes, is a shelf full of older new old stock Mercury parts. Probably half a pickup load worth of them or so. Boxes of distributor caps, rotors, gaskets, bellows, etc. Those I do know will sell but those are easy to ship and are good eBay fodder in the winter.
I thought about borrowing a buddies big truck if I do this, but that will mean lugging every motor up a ramp into a dock height truck, and back down again and it'll have to be done in one day so the truck can go back to work during the week. If I use my car and small trailer, I can haul them safer and about 20 at a time or so with loose parts in the middle. (The motors can hang on the side rails). I get the stands too so that'll help with storing and sorting them if I go that route. If it were only say half that were stuck, the plan would be easier to figure out.
I'm just not thrilled about the idea of junking up my place with more outboards. The woman didn't say there's a dead line but she wants an answer by next week or she said she's going to call a scrapper to clear it all out.
The tools are likely worth as much or more than the motors but none are anything I don't already have and the two huge boxes will be a real job to get down into the basement here. I don't have an outside entrance, everything that goes down there has to get carried through the dining room, kitchen and down the hallway to the basement stairs. It took a winch, four guys, and lots of prep work to get my three bank Snap On box and milling machine down there two years ago.
