squid, i was in the same boat(pun intended) 2 years ago. i fought the lure of 4stroke until my 20 year old merc oil injection had a hiccup. it;s a different beast, lotta pluses and a few minuses. the way i justify it, old 2 stroke burns around 11 gph, 4S around 7, ive put 240 hours on mine, so i've burned 1680 gallons vs 2640. thats a savings of 960 gallons @ $3.00. so about $1500 a year in fuel savings. it will pay for itself in 8 years.

this is the logic i have used on myself and it works so far.

if you want to offset the cost a little, i'll take some of those decals

ill give some different props a try.

I dont get to run wide open very often here but id like to see what she can do

Thanks for all the input guys. Guess it all depends on what I find when I pull the head. Of course it looks like I'll be pulling 16 hour days all this week so may have to hold off til the weekend. If I can get it rebuilt for say under 2K I may just do that for now and save up for a 4 stroker in the future. I hate having to finance anything, especially boat related and I don't exactly have $12G laying around to spend on a motor. An old man told me once only kinda of boat you can love is one that's paid for. I've taken his advice for 15 years and even though I've had downed boats at least they weren't down and I was paying on it.

Draglink, are you taking about Mr. Belvin? Also are you running your oil injection? Mine was bypassed and I mixed the fuel 50:1. I really hate having to do that but my Merc friend said its the way to go. He also wonders if that's why it leaned out. He said whenever he bypasses injection he's had to jet up the carbs. This was indeed a freshly rebuilt motor so I wonder if they didn't do that. I also plan on pulling the carbs and taking them to him to see if he thinks that may be the culprit. Just wondering if anyone else has heard that.

Hahaha hey DragLink apparently you know my Merc guy. Troy told me he knows you. He was telling me over the weekend he had a buddy with a V-20 that'll run its *** off come to find out he was talking about your rig. That's funny.

Troy as in TEE-ROY Richardson? Hell yeah, we call him Poppie these days(Charleston, SC strip club nick-name LOL!). We just hung out this past Sunday. Love me some Tee Roy!

Yes, my guy is Bernard Belvin....awesome guy as well. I premix, always have, hasn't been as issue for me.

Yea I grew up with TEE-ROY. He said Bernard taught him everything he knows about Mercurys. He said he y'all talked about my boat Sunday but he never put 2 and 2 together. I said well how many lime green V-20's in Mathews are there to talk about?? Haha. He's a goof. I popped the head off today and he's gonna run by and see if he thinks it needs sleeved. If not he agrees Bernard is the way to go. Said I'll never have to mess with it again.

EXACTLY! He called me this morning when he realized we were talking on here. The only things I have had to mess with after my rebuild are normal stuff like trim motor, stator....I think I had a switch box go out. Between BB and TeeRoy, they will fix you up. BB wont just spend your money, he will give good, honest advice before he does anything.

I need to work on the details of the decal as for some reason my program isn't vectorizing it correctly. It's kind of choppy and skewed but I didn't really have time to mess with it. Only reason I made it was we were about to pull out of the driveway with it when my dad pointed out I didn't have any registration decals on it. That would of been a quick stop by the marine police. I had a little wasted space on the vinyl so I snuck it in there.

I'll play with it some and get some to ya. If anyone else wants some just let me know size and color and I'll see what I can do. I pretty much keep the main color wheel colors on hand. Just so happens I have lime green and purple too...total coincidence. Depending on size probably looking at $5-$10 max shipped. I don't charge near as much as the vinyl shops. Pretty much just material and shipping.

Deal, thanks