need advice on used outboard purchase...

[THEFERMANATOR]

Originally Posted by bsteckel

ok ... i found this .. guy has an 2002 evinrude 200 hp ficht .. powerhead blew and there is a hole in it .. supposedly in great condition other than that .. freshwater use.

i know this motor is a bit heavy ... someone in the beginning of my search said stay away from anything with ficht written on it? not sure why.

thinking of going this route and either getting a power head ready to go or finding and rebuilding one .. this way i know what i have.

any thoughts on this?

My question would be why did it blow? Powerheads don't normally just blow a hole through the block unless something else was wrong that caused it to happen. Engines do wear out, but not many actually wear them out. Look at it this way, you get a rebuilt powerhead for it or rebuild one. Don't kid yourself it WILL cost AT LEAST $2000 if you can do the whole job(with the exception of machineing) yourself. A rebuilt powerhead will set you back closer to $4K because a windowed block will most likely not be an acceptable core.

Then you still have an unknown engine with a MAJOR problem to be fixed still. I did a nice write-up awhile back about this, most overlook why the original failure occurred and then it happens again right away. So after say $2000-$2500 for the rebuild and a few incidentals, now your going to be takeing it to a FICHT expert for programming(or buying the software yourself) to set-it up for break-in. And now you have an engine that could still need an injector or EMM to fix the original failure. You could spend another $1K REAL quick paying a shop to diagnose an engine that VERY few understand and can work on.

FICHTS aren't all bad, but when you get a problem child ANYTHING it can cost you a FORTUNE to keep it running.