When we bought the Mercury, we wanted a used motor. It was a prospective purchase; we’d never had
a RIB before, didn’t know whether it was going to work for us, and had no idea
how much horsepower we wanted. We also
wanted electric start and power tilt for Tanya, since she would be a primary
user. It would have been a very
expensive motor new, and we were trying to be frugal and limit our exposure to a bad decision.
Now, we think a brand new motor is warranted. We’re committed to the RIB and we are willing
to make the investment for reliability. We're ready to leave Florida and don't need the additional risk of a grumpy outboard. Our mantra has changed to "the motor we don't know doesn't work is better than the one we do". We’ve
already determined that used motors aren’t economical for us anyway. The only downside is that a new motor has to go
through a break-in period, and we can’t start abusing it right away.
We have never seriously considered a 4-stroke motor. They use less fuel and have cleaner
emissions, and it would be great not to have to fool around with mixing oil
into the fuel, but for us the costs outweigh the benefits.
For starters, 4-strokes are more complicated. They are now standard in the US because of our
emissions laws, but this is not the case in much of the world. We envision ourselves going to developing
countries where we have to rely on ourselves and locals to keep our engines
running. A sophisticated motor that
nobody understands and requires special tools and parts would be a liability,
and possibly completely useless. We’re
much more comfortable with a 2-stroke design that has been manufactured for 20
years and is used worldwide.
Four-strokes are also heavier. To my simple mind, the piston has to cycle
twice as many times for each power stroke of the engine. It can’t run twice as fast, so instead it has
to have a larger displacement in order to deliver equivalent power. That means a larger, heavier block and flywheel. Because we eventually have to lift it, either when moving the motor on and off the boat, or hoisting the boat in the davits, the weight is a problem.
The 4-strokes are the beneficiaries of more modern engineering,
which helps with the power-to-weight ratio. It’s
one of those cases where improvements only occur when the manufacturers are
forced to make them. Progress is painful
and it took years for manufacturers to figure out how to make a good
4-stroke. It does appear that they’re
there now and today’s motors are fairly reliable. But mandated progress is often misguided,
like what they’ve done with ethanol in gasoline.
We compare the 4-stroke revolution to the way cars changed
to electronic fuel injection. Suddenly
you can’t work on your car anymore, but the cars are more efficient and reliable. Like an old VW bug versus a Honda
Accord. But everything breaks eventually
and back to my original point: try getting your Honda fixed in a coastal village
in Nicaragua.
So 4-strokes are pretty much off the table when looking at
new motors. But we did make the rounds
to the local dealers to kick the tires and let them help solidify our
position. And we learned a few things,
too. For example, a 4-stroke is harder
to pull-start, which makes sense with the lower cycle ratio and larger
cylinders. Electric start was already a
requirement, but we want a pull-start backup.
A 2-stroke will have both the electric button as well as a pull-start
handle, but to pull-start an electric 4-stroke you have to take the cowling and flywheel
cover off and install a handle (at least on the models we've seen).
The Yamaha dealer was not very helpful, nor was the factory
rep, who happened to be there. Neither
of them knew the product very well, and between them they gave us a couple of mis-truths. For example, they said the warranty could be
used internationally, when Yamaha’s website clearly says it can’t. But we did get to see the models (and how big
they really are). And we were surprised
to learn that Yamaha’s 4-stroke 20hp is only 10 lbs heavier than the 2-stroke
25, which is almost acceptable.
Of course, all the models he had were 4-strokes. New 2-strokes are very hard to come by in the
US these days, and can only be had from dealers with the foresight to stock up
on them before 2010. We know of a dealer in St Petersburg that has them, but haven't given up on Miami yet.
The Mercury-Suzuki-Evinrude dealer was great. When we explained what we want to do, he said
his money would be on a Yamaha 2-stroke if we could find one. He lamented not stocking up on the 2-stroke
Mercury motors, but Yamaha was still #1 internationally and he thought Mercury
was a distant second. Apparently Suzuki
only lets dealers carry above or below 40hp, so he couldn’t tell us much about the
smaller motors, except that he’d heard the Suzuki 25 was a turd.
Evinrude is an oddball because their E-Tec motors are
2-strokes that are actually cleaner than 4-strokes. However, they do this with oil injection and
electronics and are therefore even more complicated. This technology doesn’t scale down well and
their smallest motor is a 25hp. It
weighs 146 lbs, which is 35 lbs more than the Yamaha 2-stroke, so not a
contender. Otherwise they’re great
motors and we see lots of them. The
dealer has one himself, but said that 3 years between scheduled maintenance
often leads to nasty surprises.
A new Mercury holds no attraction for us. The only real differentiator is how they
shift. On a Mercury you twist the
throttle one way for forward, and the other way for reverse. Everyone else uses a handle on the
powerhead. We tried to see this as an
advantage when buying our current motor; that a person could shift gears one-handed
without fumbling for a shift lever, but previous experience told us this was
not as simple as it sounds. This has
held true, and after using our Mercury almost every day for the last 5 months we
still screw up the gears, or have to look down to be sure.
It is a major disappointment is that nobody has a power tilt
option in combination with a short shaft and a tiller on a new motor. But our old Mercury 25 2-stroke does. Actually, the Nissan 25 4-stroke does too,
and it’s even fuel injected, but it weighs 182 lbs. The only hope we have at this point on a new
motor is an aftermarket solution from CMC.
This is a separate tilt bracket that bolts to the back of the boat and
the motor clamps onto. It weighs 24 lbs. It’s either that, or we continue to invest in
our Mercury, or we give up on Tanya and the kids ever taking the dinghy ashore
themselves.
So assuming our old Mercury is a lost cause, our next choice
is a new Yamaha 25hp 2-stroke with a CMC tilt bracket.
The final consideration for a new Yamaha is domestic or
international. We can buy a new Yamaha
2-stroke 25 either in Florida or in the nearby Bahamas. I don’t know if the motors are actually different,
but the US dealers don’t recognize the international model numbers. We discovered this with our old Yamaha 4hp
that Take Two’s previous owner bought in the USVI’s. This really forces us to decide where the
motor is going to spend its time. A US
motor will come with a warranty that can only be used in the US, but we know
how to get US parts shipped internationally, so that may be our best bet. We have not checked the motor prices in the Bahamas,
but we should since 2-strokes are not the rarity there that they have become here.
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