FINALLY found the answer to my alarm problem.

[at100plus]

Called Mercury yesterday. I was surprised, they were very fast to answer and called me back with my solution.

I bought my motor like this last year, and my low oil alarm was going off since I got it.

I never saw the sensor installed correctly so I couldn't possible have known that this was the problem.

I'd love to know the knuckle head who did this.

Someone put the little bushing in first and then put the sensor inside that.

This pic shows how it was. The next pic shows how it is supposed to be.

When it was installed wrong, the sensor was up at the top of the tank along with the magnetic float that activates the sensor and the alarm went off. When the bushing is on top of the sensor, it puts the sensor down deep into the tank so that the magnet only gets to it when the oil is low.

I have had this problem almost a YEAR now!!!

[at100plus]

this is the order it is supposed to go in

[at100plus]

The wires run through the bushing and the screw holds the bushing down while the bushing holds the sensor deep inside.

[at100plus]

The sensor was on top like this with the screw holding the sensor on top of the bushing. It looked correct, because the sensor fits nicely inside the bushing and comes flush with the top of the oil tank.

[jerry]

HAHAHA jerry did that too , pulled my hair out for a week and 2 new senders !!!! took the sender out to clean the tank and put it back in wrong

[at100plus]

I bought the motor from your buddy with the high 90s Superboat.

I bought a sensor and a tank at a highly overpriced $60

[Markus]

I did a similar thing on a Yamaha:

I made the floating sender in the oil tank stick to the oil filter. (The sender goes inside the oil filter and I did not properly align the oil filter with the bottom of the tank, making the oil filter bend)

The result was that after running down the first tankfull of oil, the oil tank never got filled, neither did the alarm go off, since the same sender controlled both and that sender was just stuck in the filter.

Cost me a crank, a full set of bearings, two pistons, one cylinder boring and 6 honings.

Those oil injection systems are dangerous!

[at100plus]

I think the Merc system is the best of all of them. The only way you should lose oil is if the pump fails, or if your remote tank doesn't fill the motor tank AND simultaneously your warning alarm doesn't work. I don't know how OMC does their oil system now, but the one I had was scary with the prime bulb and the hot hose going direct to the motor from the remote tank. I was always terrified to have to disconnect it.

When I rigged the motor, the alarm came on before I even started the motor. I mixed oil in the gas first run and checked to see that it was burning oil. I kept a close eye on it while I spent a year troubleshooting the problem. If I had just seen someone else's oil tank the problem would have been solved, but everyone I know mixes oil.