• Mercury Racing Blog: Virtual Tour – Part 3: Outboard Production

    Continuing from Virtual Tour….Part 2…we will follow the assembly of a Mercury Racing OptiMax 300XS outboard.

    2-Cycle Outboards

    Consumer, government and race outboards, featuring Mercury’s low-emissions, direct fuel injected 2-stroke OptiMax powerheads, are assembled at Mercury Racing’s factory in Taycheedah, Wisconsin. Consumer models include the 3.0 Liter OptiMax 250 SportXS and the 3.2 Liter OptiMax 300XS outboards. Watch for a future post on the OptiMax JP, an outboard we build for the government.

    The competition outboards produced in Mercury Racing’s factory include our 2.5 Liter OptiMax 200XS SST (Super Stock Tunnel) and 2.5 Liter OptiMax 200XS ROS (Race Offshore). However, Racing’s four strokes — the 60 EFI FormulaRace and the Verado 350 SCi — while designed and validated here, are built off-site at other Mercury facilities in order to share common (and expensive to replicate) production processes.

    Gary Aman lowers a 300XS powerhead into position for final engine assembly.

    OptiMax powerheads are manufactured complete, to Racing’s specifications, at Mercury Marine’s headquarters campus — home to Mercury OptiMax outboard production in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Upon their arrival at Mercury Racing, a powerhead’s first stop is one of our 2-cycle dynamometers. Upon completing a power run, they move to Racing’s 2-cycle department. There, technicians inspect the cylinders, to ensure proper wear patterns, prior to final outboard assembly. Meanwhile, another technician is working his magic: handcrafting a gearcase that will efficiently transfer 300 h.p. to the water.

    Gearcase

    A high performance gearcase is somewhat analogous to a precision watch. Shafts, gears and bearings are precisely matched for efficient transfer of power. Only the parts are bigger.

    Mike Riedi is our outboard gearcase guru. He has over 30 years experience building all types of drives: from the VI Super Speed Master gearcase (first used in the 1970s by Team Mercury during the outboard factory wars) to the wide variety of gearcase styles offered on our current line of consumer and competition outboards. Mike also builds Sport Master gearcases featured on selected models of Bravo One XR sterndrives.

    Read the full blog post here >>
Frank Mole Transport