John,
You wrote "When you say turn the points cam upside down, what particular part are you talking about? " That is the part with the arrow head on it it slips off crankshaft and can be put on upside down I call it ignition cam but it is the part with arrow head on it.

I have never worked on that particular outboard but I have worked on that style ignition so I needs some more pictures as I think we all do. The pics will be very helpful to all of us. What I think I am hearing is the you have the piston positioned at the top of cylinder or very close in your picture that you just posted?? Also what I think I am hearing is the timing does not vary when you move the lever only the carb butterly positioning for fast to slow??? If the piston is at the top of cylinder and the points are in fact closed we have a problem.

When you get home do this for me if you will. 1st take a picture of the lever assembly and how it works your carb. 2nd With your points gaped at 020 turn your crankshaft clockwise until the points just barely open take a picture of them just barely opened. 3rd take a picture of a the pencil your using so I can see how long it is 4th picture of the pencil pushed into the spark plug hole so I can see how far the pencil goes into the hole. 5th flip the ignition cam over and take pictures of pics 2 like you did before (with cam upside down turn crankshaft again until points just open) and pic 4 again of how far down pencil is inside spark plug hole and post them also. NOTE: If you have 2 ignition cams please take pics of them side beside with the arrow head up so we can see if their might be a difference between the 2 of them.

Also don’t forget to see if you have a seal leaking by putting some spray for instance wd40 on the top seal then the bottom seal rotate the flywheel to see if you see air bubbles the spark plug normally doesn’t have to be in the engine. I don’t however think this would stop the engine from popping off a few seconds when trying to start with starting fluid but it might stop it from running on gasoline correctly later once we get it to pop off.

Hope that helps,
Joe

The points are 2 pieces but when mounted together they become 1 piece and that’s not our issue at the moment.