Mercury Marine Built the Perfect Engine ,,, then made it Disappear

[croSSed]

Why does this video show mostly new 4 stroke motors?
In the same way I will never own an electric car, I will never own a 4 stroke outboard.

[David - WI]

Four strokes are better in every way… Except for:

-complexity
-ease and cost of keeping them running
(how many 40 year old four strokes will still be in daily use in another 15 years?)
-power/dispacement
-power/weight
-power/dollar

-Peter

And there aren't even any "modern" two-strokes built using modern design & manufacturing methods to compare them to.

[pcrussell50]

And there aren't even any "modern" two-strokes built using modern design & manufacturing methods to compare them to.

Yep.

...but the part of the tape that criticized Merc for just black listing models and obsoleteing parts with the magical NLA designation on motors that were not even barely off their " Use by Date " truly turns any desire to jump into ownership of a new model to highly unlikely. lets see , we have a V6 wait a inline 6 supercharged wait a V10 wait a supercharged V6 ,,, and all the parts will be readily available in perpetuity , we promise , really we do , this time will be different , we promise . No Thanks

I found a little bit of a cheat for this... My one and only four stroke is a 2000 Merc 90... Only... It's a Yamaha powerhead. So while all the Merc parts sources say NLA, the Yamaha sources are still generally available, and cheaper than Merc if Merc even has the part at all. Also, my Merc 90 FourStroke is the carb one. I keep it clean and it runs well... For now. If anything goes wrong with it, I don't know if I'll be able to fix it.

***

The best motors ever made are......available today. Motors, boats, and rigging, are far superior. Those who have them understand. Having plenty of different 2 strokes on dozens of boats, then switching to the 300R, now 450R, the next boat 500R, life is far better. We are so lucky Merc is building us products that go this fast right from the crate, under warranty. I used to keep a tool box and parts everytime I went to the ramp. Today I just make sure there's gas in the boat. And no, this stuff is not too expensive. Some just have a budget deficiency......

Jr.

Larry Gempp Jr.

Proud HydroStream Powertour Member

Current Ride - 2024 22 Liberator - 450R

Sounds like you buy a whole new boat for each new weight upgrade in motors? Probably a smart move. I'm not comfortable overweighting a hull either.

You have a Hydrostream? Which one? Which motor?

-Peter

[skialot2]

We can argue until the cows come home about which is a better motor. A 2 stroke or a 4 stroke. It doesn't matter. They are both great motors. Mercury discontinued the 2 stroke for one reason and one reason only. If you put both motors in a showroom next to each other, about 8 out of 10 people bought the 4 stroke.

[pcrussell50]

Not saying you’re wrong, but in some other places such as Australia where carb two strokes were sold new until mid-2020, it took an emissions related hard cutoff date to kill them off. And in yet other places with more relaxed regulations, (probably developing nations), you can still buy carb two strokes. Somebody, somewhere chooses them when given the choice, and they do it for a reason. I’d bet anyone a steak dinner that those reasons are related to the same reasons people here keep their two strokes going instead of buying a new 500R and a boat to float it, every couple of years.

-Peter

[Greg G]

If you could buy a brand new 225X or a brand new 200R something tells me the 225X would do very well against the R four stroke.

[mr fun]

If you could buy a brand new 225X or a brand new 200R something tells me the 225X would do very well against the R four stroke.

I watch fairly closely , haven't seen any 225 X's for sale in the used motor page , that is from what I can read ( VERY FEW performance boaters in Jax area ) a very reliable unit that can be built to go to the moon .

[Greg G]

I meant if the 225X were still being built and offered brand new side by side with the 200R

[pcrussell50]

I meant if the 225X were still being built and offered brand new side by side with the 200R

Lest I sound like a blind two stroke freak:

I’d imagine that for people to go for the two stroke, there would have to be a compelling reason, such as lower purchase cost, ease of repair, planning to have it for decades, or you have a boat meant for a 375lb motor that might not be so good with a 500lb motor and less power.

Those are the reasons I use carb two strokes. That and an overall ethos of avoiding depreciating assets to the extent possible. (I hope I’m not wasting my money on the expensive private prep schools we have the girls in, lol. Sometimes I wonder. )

If I were buying a brand new boat every couple of years to go with each new step up in engine weight as each new -R comes out, I would have a use-case to go with four strokes.

***

The best motors ever made are......available today.
Jr.

Can you flesh out what you mean by that?

-By that do you mean that today's motors are more likely to still be in use 40 years from now, like the Merc V6's a lot of us have?

-By that do you mean that today's motors are easier for a shade tree mechanic to repair?

-By that do you mean that todays' motors are lighter for a given power so that we can hang them on our favorite boats without having to buy a new one?

Because these "built to last" kinds of things are things that matter to some people, and to them, make one kind of motor better than another. Myself included.

-Peter

[David - WI]

We can argue until the cows come home about which is a better motor. A 2 stroke or a 4 stroke. It doesn't matter. They are both great motors. Mercury discontinued the 2 stroke for one reason and one reason only. If you put both motors in a showroom next to each other, about 8 out of 10 people bought the 4 stroke.

If you ignore the fact that Mercury stopped developing the two-strokes and offered no new features, models, or even styling updates... and that they stopped advertising two-stokes, taking them to boat shows or offering them to magazines for testing... and that Brunswick stopped their dozens of boatbuilders from rigging two-strokes on new boats... and that Mercury not only drastically raised the prices but also slow-walked delivery for about the last 3 years; then yeah - consumer choice FOR SURE.

[mr fun]

I bled merc for 50 years when most others in my area ran omc.
Not any more.
If I was buying a new engine, it would be Suzuki.

what perked my ears up was seeing they are a Yanmar co now

[Chaz]

The demonrat party followed their own biased C.A.R.B. tard rules and with a swipe of the pen outlawed the production of two strokes to be sold in the United States. If Kumla would have been placed in office, your gas and diesel powered land transportation would have been next.
There are company's that have kept up with and committed to improving two stroke technology in their R+D dept. but they would have to see permanent laws put in place to invest in putting new models into production. No need in pizzing off a commie regime in the next cycle and having them say .. BTW , no four stroke on the water either.
It's no secret it takes at least half as much more displacement to make the same power as a two stroke makes reliably. And I've ran enough blown alky motors to know what you can do with supercharging. but along with that comes ... weight.
Performance boat builders were quick to come up with hulls to handle the porkchops. The mindset seems to be, buy a new boat or sit on the dock .. looser.
Personally i think most of those guys have a short **** and are trying to make up for it.
So you can keep up with the times and join the look at me crowd, or keep fixing what you have and be proud of what you have done.
Most of the four stroke nut swingers, if you look back, at one time or another have said ... I'll never buy one of those ... and now that they have, even if they hate it, their ego would never let then admit it ..

[pcrussell50]

No need in pizzing off a commie regime in the next cycle and having them say .. BTW , no four stroke on the water either.

Such a regime might play a soft hand first, and require catalytic converters, which is something we know has been talked about. I'd bet anyone a steak dinner that the usual suspects who buy a new $70k motor every four years, (along with a new hull to float the weight), will have to start buying new motors every two years, and they'll be just as happy about it as they are now: "Best motors ever made!1!"

Performance boat builders were quick to come up with hulls to handle the porkchops. The mindset seems to be, buy a new boat or sit on the dock

There is something to this. I feel like I am learning that a lot of the people hard-pushing the new four stroke stuff, also buy new hulls to go with each new weight increase in motors. They talk about how great the new motor is, without telling you the, "Oh yeah, I also bought a new boat to go with it", part.

-Peter

[Mark Poole ModVP]

Sadly it seems the only people who still can get their hands on the plain jane C series Yamaha 2 strokes are the Somali pirates who go out and try to hi jack the cargo ships. Every one of those pirate boats have those engines on the back.

[pcrussell50]

Sadly it seems the only people who still can get their hands on the plain jane C series Yamaha 2 strokes are the Somali pirates who go out and try to hi jack the cargo ships. Every one of those pirate boats have those engines on the back.

Yep, 100%

As I said back in post #20 of this thread we had them in Australia until mid-2020 when the Feds slammed the door on further sales of carby two strokes. Of course they did it like the American Feds did... They didn't openly ban two-strokes, they just set an emissions level that they couldn't pass.

It's uplifting when I'm back there visiting and I see comparatively new carby two strokes powering nice family recreational and fishing boats. Pragmatic motors for pragmatic, maritime people. This besides the developing countries as you have alluded to, where the drawbacks of modern four strokes are simply too much for people who need their marine propulsion, and need to maintain it with basic tools and techniques.

***

I have said that I DO have a four stroke... A Mercaha 90 FourStroke... Carbureted. Besides the fact it's about as heavy as a 2.4/200, I do like it's quiet smoke free idle. It is NOT however, particularly quiet underway at 5500 rpm. Just a different noise, and kind of loud. Anyway back in summer of 2016 I spent a month in a Mexican fishing village called San Carlos. I made friends with the local mechanic there and he said that besides the obvious two stroke Yammies, the people with big enough Pangas to float it, like the Mercaha 90 FourStroke... As long as it's the carbureted version that they can keep running. The fuelie one "esta no bueno".

-Peter