My 1996 Evinrude 130hp VRO has an intermittent miss. At first it was only noticeable at high speed, however now it has progressed to running on 2 or even 1 cylinder at idle. I know this is the case as I have placed an inductive timing light on each HT lead and watched the light flash (or not flash).

Increasing revs on the engine temporarily returns the spark to some cylinders.

As the problem alternates between cylinders, I have ruled out coils, spark plugs and leads.

These are the results from testing the sensor (trigger) coil:

NORMAL side
white-blue 41.1ohms
white-pink 41.1ohms
white-green 41.1ohms
white-purple 41.1ohms
:all within specs

ADVANCE side
white-blue 118.1ohms
white-pink 118.1ohms
white-green 117.9ohms
white-purple 117.8ohms
:all within specs

Using a peak recording multimeter whilst cranking the engine, i am only getting between 9mV and 16mV output from the aforementioned wire combinations. The manual says i should be getting 500mV(0.5V).

As the outboard does run, and understanding the powerpack requires 0.5V from the trigger to fire, do these voltage readings make sense? Do these symptoms sound like a sensor coil failure - or could my readings be wrong and there be a problem with the powerpack?