Oh, the joys...I am currently working on a very low hour year 2000 motor, but I've seen both of these over the years of working on outboards.

1. The previous owner had failed to drain the carbs at the end of it's last run - this stuff, and quantities of water, remained in the 3 float bowls. It will be much much worse with E10 Monkey Fuel. It took a few hours to clean them up..

2. Sometime during it's short use the motor was run out of water, without a flushing device fitted. The impeller has overheated, damaging it's integrity and causing the stainless insert to overheat and melt into the plastic body of the water pump. Parts of 3 blades of the impeller have vanished, presumably into the waterways around the powerhead, with a potential to cause powerhead overheating..The parts cost to repair the pump damage will be about £90, but a dealer would charge their standard labour charge to investigate further.

Carbs cleaned, new water pump, new impeller, new fuel pump gaskets / diaphram...all ready to fire up. A pleasure to work on these motors and this one in such great nick otherwise.

Maybe will convert to e-start at some stage, but they are easy to pull start. Plenty of short shaft variants around like this, so a good rig for our older classics and at only 75kgs & 43cu.in, is close to a Merc 44cu.in (45hp at the prop) in weight and power, but nicer sounding IMO. The advantage of these is they share everything with the 50hp, bar the carburetor jetting. The 40's maximum fuel consumption at 5500 is 18.5l per hour, so cruising is a fairly frugal exercise.

The pic below was an 80s one on a Pearly Miss Deluxe - still wonder why I sold it, but had a stupid idea to re-power with a classic outboard.