Info Merc Opti 150

[willy]

I don't think I/O's fall in this ball park because they are a pain in the Balls to work on outdrive wise and every buddy of mine that has had one has had to have work done on the outdrive constantly, every year something that costs him hundreds and hundreds of dollars
JMHO

[Seaducer]

I definately agree with willy on this one. I prefer outboards as well.

[THEFERMANATOR]

I/O's are fine for there application, but not the best for a boat that stays in the water for extended periods. The big outdrive killer is outdrive corrosion in the exhaust cavity from the inside out. Unfortunately you can't get in there to paint it or protect it since it is unaccessible. Also you have dissimiliar metals constantly submerged in saltwater. Outboards are easier to maintain as they can be trimmed out of the water and don't have to stay submerged in it. Up until DFI's and 4 strokes, the choice was easy for economy until recently. Now outboards are pretty much dominating most categories. On a V-21 though, you only have the outboard option due to the built in set-back.

And WILLY makes a good point in regards to current technology, they have gone the way of automotive and have become to complex for the average shade tree to work on. Even doing a tune-up now is involved since indexing is required for electrode clearance and proper burn. N/A 4 strokes have a slight edge in not being as complex, but not by much. And as emissions get more stringent in 09 they'll only get more and more sensors to contend with. And the rumor is by 2012 they'll even have catylic converters in outboards, possibly even sooner as MERCRUISER is already working on prototype cat converters for the 6.0L I/O there working on.

[spareparts]

Merc, Crusader, and Indmar allready have cats in Calinfornia.

[randlemanboater]

When I bought my Johnson 140 4-stroke, I installed it and the dealer sent off the warranty stuff for me....but I don't know if that is general practice for Johnson dealers or just this one.....and that was in 2003 also.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Randleman there are still a few dealers that will do that for you, but the manufacturers clearly state in there warranty that a dealer MUST install it for the warranty to be active. There are dealers out there that will say they installed it and not actually do it, and then if they need a warranty repair they may not actually have a warranty. This has happened in the past when a dealer got caught not installing the engines and the manufacturere found out and yanked there dealership license from them and voided all of the warranty's on the engines they had supposedly installed for people. I don't remember the dealers name, but I know SUZUKI did this to one and then the dealer had to pay for all of the warranty repairs when they got taken to court.

And I had heard KOMIFORNIA was requiring kitty's, but didn't know for sure. Just wait until they hit outboards with them, this ought to be interesting.

[spareparts]

i think Ed's was one of the big reasons the manufactures started clamping down on loose motor sales. They were selling motors everywhere, for prices that no one could compete with, local dealers were getting pretty pi$$ed about it. Chat Lee was selling some loose engines as well that stirred up some local dealers. As particular as the new engies are about set up, it has to be installed by someone who knows what he's doing(being a dealer doesn't neccesarily mean that they know what they are doing). A lot of the early E-Tec issues can be traced back to improper set up, and a lot of opti's popped from being over propped. Improper set up can break an owners opinion of the expensive motor he just payed for. And its not just dealers, I've seen plenty of prerigged boats(OB's, I/B's and I/O's) that were improperlly rigged by the manufacture. A good dealer can make the difference.