Les Lampman
New member
Matt Gurnsey":2ikn22x7 said:
:thup :thup :thup
Thanks Matt...great post.
Les
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Best Outboard Brand for Owner Maintenance?
- Thread starter Darkwater
- Start date
:thup :thup :thup
Thanks Matt...great post.
Les
There is something to be said for preference.
If a buyer had good experience with a brand, and they have local dealer support for that brand, might as well buy that brand and stay positive all around.
A person who loves Suzuki but winds up with a Yamaha, will be more apt to voice a complaint about that motor and we all hear about it. If they had the motor they wanted, there would be more positive statements or silence from them.
Get what you like and what is supported locally and all will be happy in most cases.
Or just get any motor and be thankful you don't have to row.
Greg
If a buyer had good experience with a brand, and they have local dealer support for that brand, might as well buy that brand and stay positive all around.
A person who loves Suzuki but winds up with a Yamaha, will be more apt to voice a complaint about that motor and we all hear about it. If they had the motor they wanted, there would be more positive statements or silence from them.
Get what you like and what is supported locally and all will be happy in most cases.
Or just get any motor and be thankful you don't have to row.
Greg
starcrafttom
Active member
The original question is what motor is easiest to work on your self? Well I think they all are to the point that you can work on them. Oil, plugs, water pump, filters and valves are just about the only thing you really have to do to maintain your motor.
More to the point is not working on them but diagnosing the problem. Given a shop book and a tool set I can pull a motor completely apart and I might even be able to put it back together. Figuring out what is wrong is the hard part. Even then its more a matter of money. Buying the reader and learning how to use it. Most of the thing that are going to go wrong are sensor. If I know which sensor is bad I can uninstall and replace it my self.
So is there a code reader available for my Honda 225 to the public? I have one for my ford ( well my father has it and I borrow it) it has saved us money before. It cost far more for the shop to diagnose the bad air flow sensor then it does for the time it takes to put one in.
I am not a motor head by any stretch of the imagination but I was raised by one. It mostly comes down to learning how to trouble shoot your motor. I recently had motor trouble on the 27 headed for Friday harbor. I was not getting full power and was getting lower MPG. So what do you check first? Well there are only two major areas I can check myself on the boat. Fuel and spark. Fuel is easy pop the top and see if fuel is making it to the last filter and are any of the three filters in the system clogged. If so find out where and replace or clean. Spark? Is the motor getting juice? If not check the cable and all fuses. If it is check each plug until you find one that is not firing. That's what my problem was. One plug was bad. I did the swap thing with another plug to make sure it was the plug and not the coil. ( my motor has 6 coils).
When Peter had a no starting motor last year we could not find the problem because we did not know where all the fuses where. Peter and I checked all the ones we could find but there was one he did not know about. Later that caused me to go out to the boat and find all the fuses between the battery and the key, then the key and motor on my boat. It was a simple fix for Peter but a shop guy had to do it and it cost him time on the water. Peter had to use the kicker to get home.
I think we would all be well served if we spent more time getting to know our systems and tracing wires in the driveway so when things do go bad we can trouble shoot the problem better.
Oh also have the right tools and know how to use them. I am not a electrical engineer but I was raised by one. I am ashamed to admit that I am just learning to use a volt meter correctly. As Friday harbor Pats auto pilot was not working and I messed with it for a hour before going to the simple task of tracing the power flow to the unit. Just checking the fuses is not always enough. Pats problem is that the big red disengage button on the dash was stuck. You could not tell just by looking at it and pressing it several times was not working. Only when we borrowed a volt meter did we figure out that there was no juice coming out of the button. Neither pat or I had a volt meter on our boats. I'm still working on learning to use one.
More to the point is not working on them but diagnosing the problem. Given a shop book and a tool set I can pull a motor completely apart and I might even be able to put it back together. Figuring out what is wrong is the hard part. Even then its more a matter of money. Buying the reader and learning how to use it. Most of the thing that are going to go wrong are sensor. If I know which sensor is bad I can uninstall and replace it my self.
So is there a code reader available for my Honda 225 to the public? I have one for my ford ( well my father has it and I borrow it) it has saved us money before. It cost far more for the shop to diagnose the bad air flow sensor then it does for the time it takes to put one in.
I am not a motor head by any stretch of the imagination but I was raised by one. It mostly comes down to learning how to trouble shoot your motor. I recently had motor trouble on the 27 headed for Friday harbor. I was not getting full power and was getting lower MPG. So what do you check first? Well there are only two major areas I can check myself on the boat. Fuel and spark. Fuel is easy pop the top and see if fuel is making it to the last filter and are any of the three filters in the system clogged. If so find out where and replace or clean. Spark? Is the motor getting juice? If not check the cable and all fuses. If it is check each plug until you find one that is not firing. That's what my problem was. One plug was bad. I did the swap thing with another plug to make sure it was the plug and not the coil. ( my motor has 6 coils).
When Peter had a no starting motor last year we could not find the problem because we did not know where all the fuses where. Peter and I checked all the ones we could find but there was one he did not know about. Later that caused me to go out to the boat and find all the fuses between the battery and the key, then the key and motor on my boat. It was a simple fix for Peter but a shop guy had to do it and it cost him time on the water. Peter had to use the kicker to get home.
I think we would all be well served if we spent more time getting to know our systems and tracing wires in the driveway so when things do go bad we can trouble shoot the problem better.
Oh also have the right tools and know how to use them. I am not a electrical engineer but I was raised by one. I am ashamed to admit that I am just learning to use a volt meter correctly. As Friday harbor Pats auto pilot was not working and I messed with it for a hour before going to the simple task of tracing the power flow to the unit. Just checking the fuses is not always enough. Pats problem is that the big red disengage button on the dash was stuck. You could not tell just by looking at it and pressing it several times was not working. Only when we borrowed a volt meter did we figure out that there was no juice coming out of the button. Neither pat or I had a volt meter on our boats. I'm still working on learning to use one.
Just to add my 2c and something nobody mentioned. I have twin Yamaha 80's (4-stroke) on my CD25, love them, I have done all my own maintenance so far (except first 20 hour maintenance). Have had one regulator go out, most likely my fault by putting my battery switch on BOTH when one battery went South, then having both engines run at the same time on the batteries while connected together -- a BIG NO-NO on any engine. The regulator failed (smoked) about 2 months later in the middle of the channel between Catalina and San Pedro, 10 nm from the marina, at night in the rain with my family on board. Glad to have that 2nd motor! :thup The new regulator was about twice the size but fit perfectly, they must have realized a design change was needed.
But at least one difference between Yamaha and Honda that I'm aware of is valve adjustment. My Yami's require you to buy specific size shims to adjust the valves (measure, order, wait, install). The Honda's, of this size, have an adjustable bucket and ? method, which I'd really prefer. So far the valves are still in spec after 600+ hrs.
But I'm sold on Yami's, my first was a 3HP in 1988, still have it and use it all year long on my dingy, runs perfect. What sold me originally on it was that my previous small Mercs, Johnsons, and Evinrude (same as Johnson), all had a rich/lean knob on the front panel, you needed to use it to compensate for temperature/humidity or whatever to make it run, especially if parking it in the afternoon then running again at night, something my wife was totally unable to do in the event of an emergency. The Yami 3HP doesn't have one, they're carb design is superior in my opinion, at least for that size compared to the others I've owned, love it.
But at least one difference between Yamaha and Honda that I'm aware of is valve adjustment. My Yami's require you to buy specific size shims to adjust the valves (measure, order, wait, install). The Honda's, of this size, have an adjustable bucket and ? method, which I'd really prefer. So far the valves are still in spec after 600+ hrs.
But I'm sold on Yami's, my first was a 3HP in 1988, still have it and use it all year long on my dingy, runs perfect. What sold me originally on it was that my previous small Mercs, Johnsons, and Evinrude (same as Johnson), all had a rich/lean knob on the front panel, you needed to use it to compensate for temperature/humidity or whatever to make it run, especially if parking it in the afternoon then running again at night, something my wife was totally unable to do in the event of an emergency. The Yami 3HP doesn't have one, they're carb design is superior in my opinion, at least for that size compared to the others I've owned, love it.
Not being a dealer but having to support multiple boats and engines a long way from a dealer, here are my criteria:
The best motor is:
a. The most reliable (they all pretty much qualify)
b. Has the best technical manual
c. Requires the fewest number of special tools to do simple things
d. Has good internal diagnostics
e. Makes diagnostic software available to consumers.
f. Has a ready source of parts for routine maintenance.
I have technical manuals for both Hondas and Yamahas. They both are generally pretty good. I can't speak to Suzuki or Mercury, and the last I checked getting an ETEC manual was close to impossible. You can buy the Yamaha software, but getting software for Hondas and ETECs is not easy and borders on not possible the last I checked. I don't know on Suzuki or Mercury since I don't have experience with them.
The best motor is:
a. The most reliable (they all pretty much qualify)
b. Has the best technical manual
c. Requires the fewest number of special tools to do simple things
d. Has good internal diagnostics
e. Makes diagnostic software available to consumers.
f. Has a ready source of parts for routine maintenance.
I have technical manuals for both Hondas and Yamahas. They both are generally pretty good. I can't speak to Suzuki or Mercury, and the last I checked getting an ETEC manual was close to impossible. You can buy the Yamaha software, but getting software for Hondas and ETECs is not easy and borders on not possible the last I checked. I don't know on Suzuki or Mercury since I don't have experience with them.