Mercury mechanics at Atlantic highlands nj

[steplift20]

This is for my nj friends
Does anyone know. Of a good and honest Mercury mechanic who is around the Atlantic highlands nj area? I just got ripped off from Wagners marine, $375 to bypass my oil injection and he left the oil pump gear still in .

[phatdaddy]

I think it s normal to leave in internal gear in. If your going to tear down the block to get to the gear,might as well replace it and go back using the oil injection

[steplift20]

I know you leave the gear in the block but he left the pump assembly that attaches the the gear on the outside of the block

[phatdaddy]

They make a block off kit with plug, o ring and screws for 15-20 bucks.

[steplift20]

I know they make a block off kit. But the so called mechanic bypassed the oil injection and alarm but didn't take out the mechanism that is there. 375.00 rip off. I have to find a Mercury mechanic in that area. I don't mind paying but cmon that's too effing much.

[Destroyer]

I always ask how much something is going to cost before I give the go ahead. If they can't tell me I find another contractor that can.

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[spareparts]

hey Step, I've sat down at least 4 different times to respond only to be interrupted by something. As far as the price on that work from the dealer, its really not that bad. I'm at $115 per hour and contemplating going up again. Fuel cost, rent cost, and insurance all just went up on me again. Most shops charge one hour labor minimum for diagnosis, regardless of how long it takes. I haven't seen the boat, so i don't know how good of a job was done on it. But to bypass the pump, redo the fuel line, remove the tanks on the engine and in the boat, Disconnect the wiring, flat rates out to just over 2 hours. So three hours labor sounds about right for the job. Me personally probably wouldn't charge that, but I'm not a dealership and I don't have their overhead to cover, so I can give a little more leeway. Yea, it would have taken me about 10 minutes to pull the pump and inspect the gear, but that's experience working. I don't know how they proceeded with the diagnosis. If you go thru the manual, it has a long step by step procedure that's really a waste of time knowing what's usually wrong with them. The mercury oiling system is actually pretty good(OMC VRO system is by far the worst), it uses the same manufacture for the oil pump that Yamaha used, the difference is Mercury used a plastic gear, where as Yamaha used a bronze gear. Quite honestly, your system worked far longer than the OEM expected it to, they have to sell new motors somehow. I've seen original plastic gears last thousands of hours on commercial boats. What usually gets them, is the adaptor from the oil pump to the gear, Ethanol(and other additives) cause that plastic adaptor to swell and stick in the bore. When you initially start the boat up after setting off season, it strips the gear. They had a hell of a run on the ones in sport jets back in early 2000. There are many other factors that can kill a drive gear, I've seen them melt for severe engine overheat as an example(motor survived btw). Yea, it would have been nice for them to use a bronze gear, but remember, this system was designed back in the early 80s and back then, an outboard that lasted 10 years was not common. My, we have come a long way, my buddies that run the harbor taxis have 14000 hours on a pair of Yamaha 150 four strokes.. As far as a dealer not having the plug off kit in stock, they are a rare piece to have on hand, even back in the day. We used to special order them for the hot rod V6s we played with(oil gears don't like rpms over 6000) and found they were not always in stock with Mercury, that was back when they were current model engines, and long before the parts issues I'm dealing with the past couple years. And yes, you need to keep with the plug kit, or the old oil gear/pump assembly on there. There's a bronze bushing in the block the gear rides on, I've been told theres a chance it could fall out into the engine if there's not something there to keep it in place. I've never seen it happen, but supposedly its possible. Besides that, the crank case volume on that cylinder is affected if you remove the gear, that's why the plug kits goes all the way in the block, occupying space. What that does to the engine power or mixture, I don't know, we just always ran a plug kit. Anyway, glad you got it squared away without damaging the motor. I've seen way too many fail and kill the motor. I recommend removing the oiling system on all OMC products(even when brand new), and any Merc V6 that's over 10 years old, which now is all of them. For some reason, the inline 3 cylinder engines neve gave the trouble the v6 did. All the optis went electric oil pump and seem to be fine

[steplift20]

Spare, usually when I see a long read I skip it but when you responded to my question I read the whole thing twice. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I was sorted that he didn't put in a block off kit and called him and he said it will be fine ,but hearing it from you I feel very comfortable now. I did mix the oil and gas and started her up and waited to see that beautiful 2 stroke oil from the exhaust and it showed up very quickly. I was happy about that. Spare and everyone else who responded thank you. I hope you had a great Father's Day too.
I lied. I read it three times. Thanks spare.

[phatdaddy]

Mobile marine mechanics here are at $145 an hour including travel time
Dealerships running. $165

[spareparts]

yea, i need to go up on my rates. I'm really trying to stop mobile work, fuel is killing me this year