I've never owned an DFI engine, I've ran more than my share, and I personally like the OPTI's. I have yet to run an engine that sipped fuel like an OPTI(no, I have put in enough time on an e-tec to have an opinion). I've allways prefered Mercury V6's over the compition, you can't beat the hp to weight(e-tec excluded). Around here everybody wants Yamaha, so I hear all the "horror stories about Merc's" . Excluding the injector issues, the biggest problems I've seen with the OPTI's ( and with HPDI's) is carbon build up casuing burnt pistons. Carbon will create a hot spot on the piston as well as increase the compresion ratio to above normal from build up in the combusiton chamber. The number one cause of this is using cheap oil. I could never figure why anyone would spend $10,000 on an engine, then pour $12 a gal oil into it, then complain that it blew up. Combine cheap oil with all day of slow trolling, that after the boat was run out to the fishing spot over loaded because it was propped out for a light load. And any motor will scatter. Using "ring free" or carbon guard in every tank, allong with using DFI specific oil will aleviate most DFI issues. Bomb had a good idea in offering their 100 to 1 oil, no one has a cheap version, so every one has to run the good stuff. AFter having to run higher priced oil, and fuel additive, it eats into the fuel savings.
After all this being said, due to the high price of parts for any DFI engine, I wouldn't own one thats wasn't under some kind of factory warranty. Older DFI engines(HPDI included) don't have any resale around here. Allong with the aircompressor failure being expensive, price out the fuel regualtor rail assembly at over $800. There is a lot of planned obsolecence into these motors. I'll stick with good old sloppy carb motors that i can rebuild the entire power head for less than the price of the outside accesories bolted onto the block
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