TOPIC: Need Control Box guidance for '63 Merc 1000

I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Ousnamer when I picked up 2 Merc 1000's at his place in Ferdinand Idaho. It was an 8 hour round trip from my cabin in Pend Oreille County but well worth it. It was a treat meeting him and seeing his crazy big collection of marine related stuff. May beautiful Merc motors, cool boats and a bar from the prow of an old Tolly.
Neither of us were sure what Control Box goes with these motors, could somebody educate me? Oh, and do you have a set for sale, tee hee?

The box is the easy part! Pretty much any control box, from the 60's-up can be made to work. Later model control cables don't have the spring-loaded twist-lock end piece but you can get those separately.

The big issue is the control harness, did you get one of those with teh motors? The plugin pattern is different, opposite of the "standard" (i.e. later model) Merc external harness plug pattern.

If you don't have a harness, and can't find one, the other option would be to find a later-model internal wiring harness and rewire the motor. Then you can plug-in a modern harness. CDI electronics makes a replacement harness but it ain't cheap (well over $100), or sometimes you can find a good used one on eBay.

If you decide to go that route, we can help you rewire the motor. Note that even an ADI control box will work, you'd just have to splice the old external wiring harness to the ADI box's cable.

Check out the pics below, you can see the difference in pin-outs for the control harness plugs. The '65 90hp plug is the same as your '63 Phantom Black Towers of Power.

HTH........ed

Found a control box with cables & harness for your motor, ain't cheap though at $200!



Here's another, more retro, even more $$$!!

Thanks Ed, what a great education. I also appreciate the research on the control box. It is nice to have ebay as a resource.
I did get a control box with the motors, just not sure that it was period, right for the motor. See photo. This is similar to the ones for my '58 and '59 4 cyl. Mercs. It is a little larger and has a longer arm. It also has the right cobra head and plug pattern so I assume it will work.
Thanks for your help Ed.
Thom

That looks the same as the one I have for my '63 850 so it should work just fine. In fact, when I bought my '77 1150 I just changed the plug on the motor side and wired it up and took off the knurled pins on the end of the control cables and it works great.
Bill