[Fr. Frank]

Denny has a good point about the reed valves. ALL old 2 strokes get weak reeds as they age, so in addition to what he said about becoming harder to start, they often begin to to have trouble idling, and to tend to stall when shifting into gear, if you don't then add throttle immediately. The cure for this is installing new reeds.

On an inline Merc, changing the reed block means a total tear-down of the motor, because they're mounted on the crankshaft. On an Johnson/Evinrude, they're mounted between the manifold and the block, and only require removing the intake manifold to replace.

To change the reeds on a 115 Johnson V4 from the 70's or 80's was only a 1 hour repair. On a Mercury inline, it was more like 3 hours at a minimum.

Most old inline Mercury owners simply increase the idle rpms from the original setting of 600 rpms, to 800-850 rpms at idle to counter the stalling issue without a complete tear-down to rebuild the reed block.

Still, I wouldn't hesitate to own either one after I had thoroughly inspected the motor and found it sound.