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Spent 5 th April prepping and cleaning Endeavour 3 and getting the motors run up ready for a trip out on the 6 th and intended to attend the AGM after. The six hp Johnson ran like a clock . Our old 1980's vintage Mercury 75 four cylinder 2 stroke ( clam shell type, whatever that means) started well after its winter break but then we lost the electrics. We looked for loose wires, found some likely candidates, tightened them up and away it went again. Problem solved or so we thought. We started by going to aunt Betty's for a few slow drifts..c and r a small plaice( hurray!) and motored on to the front of browsea castle to try for herring. We started the motor there and it started to play up. In neutral we could not get proper rev response. It wouldn't run idle. It stalled on full throttle. Not the best place for this to happen on a strong ebb. We just managed to limp in, conking out once or twice on the way. We tied up to a mooring and deployed our Johnson. We checked the carbs for water and debris. There was none. The tide had turned so we drifted and manoeuvred using the standby for a bit and ran back down using the merc which eventually went completely dead on us. So we came home, sorry I didn't make the AGM but Baiter isn't a very good place to leave a boat unattended at the moment( if it ever is). On our return we wanted to wash t through so we went all over it with a continuity tester ( that's tech speak for two bits of wire soldered to a light bulb) and eventually came to a small fuse holder on the right hand side of the motor tucked away at the bottom. The glass fuse inside was broken and th paper burnt but the two ends of fuse wire were still erect and I guess they were still intermittently touching. On putting a new fuse in all power was restored and the engine ran well again ...good throttle response and steady idle. I'm hoping this was our problem although all the while it seemed like a fuel issue. Hooky suggested that it sounded like a punctured pump diaphragm. Two questions then.....Has anyone had this problem before and are we likely to have sorted it? And also....what size fuse should that be?