A New Breed of Horse

Years ago, I knew a couple of brothers who ran an outboard repair shop in the little Adirondack town I grew up in. Locally known as “the Pine brothers,” each one of them sported a portly physique, wire-rim glasses, suspenders, a cheery face and a bald head. And both were bachelors, not least of all, perhaps, because both were head-over-heels in love with gasoline-fired, two-stroke internal combustion engines. If you had a seemingly unsolvable problem with an outboard—or a lawnmower, go-kart, chainsaw or whatever—these guys could fix it. They were talented and perpetually busy. Two-stroke gas engines back then were all pretty much the same, despite size and application. Almost everything had a carburetor, as well as a host of other components that were, in many cases, virtually interchangeable. If a good mechanic could fix one, he could fix ‘em all.

Paul Cusson, president of Atlantic Outboard in Westbrook, Connecticut, is a little younger than me, but he can easily recall the days when the carburetor was king. In fact, when he got into the outboard repair biz back in 1984—he was just 16 years old—most two-stroke outboards not only had carbs, but they also had spark plugs, plug wires, points, condensers and coils. His first job entailed rigging engines at a local dealership. Then, as his reputation for being a superior outboard mechanic grew, he turned his