Doh . . . The 20" Merc 135 just sold this morning :/

Thanks Ferm, I was always confused, the previous owner told me 25, some others told me 25, so I always assumed 25.
I never measured to verify.

Just curious, what would happen if you replace a 20 motor with a 25?

You'd have to get a jack plate or some transom extensions to raise it up 5". There are ALOT of good 20" shafted freshwater engines out there though, so it may work in your favor.

Heres a few to look at. The first one is a 25" shaft, the other 2 are 20's. The second one has a low water pick-up that you could sell and put a regular lower back on. The third one would be ideal, but is a ways away.

http://forums.screamandfly.com/forum...light=evinrude
http://forums.screamandfly.com/forum...light=evinrude
http://forums.screamandfly.com/forum...light=evinrude

Thanks therm, I checked my model numbers and found that it is a 20.

I know that if I get a 25, I would need a jackplate, but I still wonder what would happen if you mount a 25 without a jackplate.

Check out this Motor note its a 25"
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1986-...ssoriesQ5fGear

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Evinr...ssoriesQ5fGear

It would run like crap. The boat wouldn't want to plane out and would react to trimming poorly if not dangerous under some circumstances.

Thanks Ny, those look like good deals,
problem is Christmas is coming and the fix the house honey do list is growing and getting more expensive. I think she plans it that way so I can't buy anything over the winter.

Thanks Ferm, I always wondered about that.

I was looking for motors on e-bay and came across this rebuilder:

http://1outboard.com/index.html

Has anyone ever heard or used them?


Hey FERM, I noticed on captpete's transom redo, it looks like he filled in teh notch.
I wonder if I redo my transom and fill that notch, if I could go with a 25" shaft.
There seams to be a ton of 25ers out there, but not many 20's.
Now that gets me thinking does a 20 last longer than a 25?

My service manager used that company to rebuild some powerheads for us. They rebuilt a pair of 130 Yamahas. When we got them back they had the wrong spark plugs installed. No problem, I replaced them with the right ones. I installed the powerheads,launched the boat and took it for a test ride. One engine started to run hot. I checked the thermostats. Three out of four of the thermostats were different,none were Yamaha branded. I replaced all four with Yamaha stats. It ran fine after that. Then we sent them a 150 Merc. We got it back,installed it,test ran it on a shop tank. I noticed it wasn't pumping oil. The oil pump gear on the crank stripped out. We removed the powerhead and shipped it back. We got the powerhead back,installed it,ran it,same thing. Stripped gear AGAIN. By now everybody was pissed off,the customer with us and us with this guy. We sent it back again. Well I guess third times the charm because this one finally worked fine. But because of this guy we lost a customer.
I wouldn't use this guy ever again.

I did fill in my transom to use a 25" motor. In our area there are a lot more 25" motors than 20". Almost any boat that can go in the ocean nowadays has a 25" transom. Thats why there are more of those motors around.

20" engines tend to be more so around freshwater with the bass boat guys or saltwater around the flats boat guys in high HP. I would say most 25" shafte engines rot out quicker as they were used primarily on off shore boats in saltwater. If you rebuild the transom then it isn't hard to raise it up to 25".