Engine Troubles

I have a 1973 glastron with a 60hp mercury tracker 2 stroke 3 cylinder engine. The motor will run at full throttle in reverse, but in foward gear will only run at half throttle. If i try to put the motor at full throttle, i will get a short burst of speed and then the motor will die until i bring it back down to half throttle. Any thoughts?

 

Toss the Mercury in the trash.

 

if that was a 73 Merc and it lived in seawater I wouldnt waste my money.

What are you looking at to determine that its full throttle in rev and not forward?
Does it have a standard Merc control box?

 

Sounds like the notorious black box ignition problem that plagues 2 cycle mercurys.

 

Get a workshop manual and follow troubleshooting procedure.

 

Im new to the boating scene. I have no idea what a control box is.I weas basing my judgment off of the sound of the engine. The boat does not have rpm or mph guages that work.When i put the boat in reverse it speeds up super fast and gets pretty loud.When im in forward gear It doesnt get very loud and sounds different

 

Post a photo of the lever you are pushing to make the engine
go faster

 

Ill have a picture up by the end of the day. I can tell you that from the number on the engine, it was made in 1995

 

here are the pictures

 

Ok powerabout, I made sure the fuel was new and good, I ran seafoam gas treatment through it, i ran seafoam carb and intake cleaner through it,I took out all three spark plugs and cleaned them, checked the spark plug wires and they look new, I checked the air filter it was good and clean, all three butterflies in the carb open and close at the same time and dont stick.After doing all this i put some muffs on it and ran it. I was able to throttle to the max in both directions without it bogging or dying. I guess the real test will be when i get the boat in the water saturday. Any other recommendations of things to check before taking the boat back out.

 

Has your engine got a distributor or 3 coils
Its hard for the untrained ear to tell if a cylinder is out on a 2 stroke.
It could be running on 2 cyl
Shorting the plug wires under load is the way to tell

 

I believe it has coils. the wires go into a black box. I didnt take the box apart.When you say shorting out the wires under a load how do you go about doing that?When shorting the wires what will i be looking/listening for? If it is in fact running on 2 cylinders instead of three how do you usually go about fixing that problem? I got the boat and engine for free and its not worth spending a whole bunch of money on thats why im trying to do all this myself.