I am looking to get a tune up on my 1980 Johnson 115 and needed some advice on who to look at. I live near Saginaw so any thing close to there would be good but would be willing to drive for good service at a good price. Thanks

If you're handy with tools and know a bit about 2 stroke engines, you can do a decent job yourself, (assuming no one responds to this post)....and you invest in a couple of service manuals. I use the evinrude service manual and the clymer manual on my 1980 evinrude.

I have a '78 johnson, and here's what I do.

1. Drain lower unit fluid. Its the screws on the right side of the lower unit. Fill from the bottom hole until it flows out of the top.

2. I get a friend for this. Pull the cowling off the motor, hook up the motor to a water hose. Start up the motor and let it warm up a few minutes. Turn off the motor. Remove all but 1 spark plug wire. Try to restart the motor. with some heavily insulated pliars, touch the other plugs one at a time to the plugs they go on, and if the motor picks up, that carb jet is clear and coil is working. Repeat on all cylinders. If one or more doesnt pick up, its time to clean the carbs, and check spark. This is done with an insulated screw driver in the boot, holding it nearly touching the plug.

To clean the carbs pull the plastic cover off the front, then do one carburetor at a time. If your unsure what your doing, take pictures of each step. You'll need to disconnect the syncronizer arm on the right side. There should be 4 nuts holding the carburetor in place over the intake. When you remove these, you'll need to unhook the gas line. After the carb is off, pull the bottom off (be careful, it will have some gas in it). Now remove the float carefully and the needle valve. Spray it down good with carburetor cleaner and blow every crevice and jet out with compressed air. Reassemble. Repeat with the bottom carburetor after you replace the first.

3. repeat test 2 and see if all 4 cylinders are firing - they should be, otherwise you need to check compression.

4. If its been more than one year, you will want to do a decarb. Get a bottle of seafoam. Get a gallon jug, cut the top off, and fill it up with 16 ounces of gas, and the can of seafoam. Mix in the appropriate amount of oil for the COMBINED liquad. Use your gasline and run the motor on the hose through all of this gas/seafoam/oil mixture. Running it in a tank of water is even better. Run it all through on fast idle, and occasionally give it a little bit of throttle, but dont exceed 2000 rpm. IT WILL SMOKE LIKE CRAZY - this is the carbon burning off. Next, hook up your regular gas line, take it to the lake, and run the snot out of it.