My thoughts exactly. I don't trust auto-oilers, and prefer to mix my own.

my 225 gets 12-14 gph @4000 rpms which is pushing the boat at 30 knots. Don't get rid of the oil injection. The pump is gear driven off the crank and will never fail. You will waste a lot of oil going to premix.

YAMAHA's oil injection is one of the best second only to SUZUKI's(the only reason SUZUKI's is better is because there reservoir is under the cowling instead of remote mounted). They have a bronze gear on the crank and a steel drive gear for the pump shaft, so VERY few failures there. There only weak point is the remote oil tank set-up which is dependant on a switch and oil pump to get oil up to the engine. The pump is VERY reliable as it is rubber encased, but the switches do fail every so often. As for swapping out your I/O, I wouldn't. The 3.7L is a good engine for the most part, and will be HARD to beat for economy and reliability.

The shiFT ROD if not changed yet will rot in time they all did! They changed in 1994 but they are good motors and i in line with therms numbers
good luck!!

When I saw the 2.5-3mpg estimates I banished all thoughts of putting this outboard on my V. It's on a center console I picked up, and that's probably where I'll leave it.

I fired the motor up in the driveway today and it seems to run fine. I did notice an odd 'ting' sound every time I shifted from either forward or reverse into neutral. I had the cover off and eventually noticed what was happening was whenever I went into neutral the starter was engaging and bouncing off the flywheel. Ever run into this problem?

A 2 part stainless replacement shift rod is on the top of my to-do list.

Hey Pete!!...I can't help it...I still leary of auto-oilers...so many other items to fail...switches, lines, intakes...my BIL's auto-oiler failed cuz the intake in the tank clogged and fried his motor...

Hey Oz, I see why you are skeptical about oil injection. A blown powerhead would piss me off too.
OMC's VRO yes I would get rid of. Merc 2.5 efi plastic crank gear and NO motion sensor yes get rid of. The only problem with tha Yamaha system especially from '90 on up is that the control module for the oil injection is built it to the ecu and not a seperate unit. So if it fails(very rare but I have seen it happen) you need to drop $1000 for a new ecu. There is a small inline filter on the remote oil tank back by the electric pump. If that is replaced every other year or so the system should be trouble free.

You're right on the money, brand wise...my 1st encounters were '85/'86 OMCs of two friends of mine...BOTH failed and cooked the motors just out of warranty...later the Merc plastic gear got a friend's 200 Black Max...rebuilt it and BOOM!!...same thing happend 2nd time!!...
Leave it to Yamaha to come up w/the system less likely to fail and I've never heard of a Yam failure...but I'm still wary...

Pete, funny you mention the Mercs with out the sensor, merc determined the coupler with the magnet was the cause of the oil gear failuer, it would swell up and stick in the bore, causeing the gear to strip out. We had a run of sport jets do it, figured they stay setting up longer than the outboards(fisherman). When we inspected the coupler, you couldn't really tell what happened. Most of them were under warranty so we went with what merc said, they updated the coupler, eventually discarded it. If merc had used a bronze gear on the crank, they would have an oil injection on par with Yamaha