Mercury Through The Years...

[Dave S]

Mk 75 gearcases were just big kg7/ kg9 cases.....Easer to have the prop gear behind the driveshaft....

[FUJIMO]

This is another thread in this history section that is just as important as it is fascinating. I click on this one nearly every day. It’s a collection of photos and information that is very likely unrivaled anywhere else on the internet. Thank you @FUJIMO and everybody here.

Greg

...thank you very kindly... have a great 4th of july weekend everybody...

[FUJIMO]

...'76 Mercury Brochure continued...

[Capt.Insane-o]

Left hand rotation? Never had a Mercury with LHR.

Noob

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[bernie]

I was heavily involved in the Gnat's production - first in FDL where we machined blocks, rods, cranks,misc. aluminum parts, and the first gearcases and internals. Someone then found a Japanese vendor for the cranks - but because I had the gauging to check them, they came to Plant 4 before assembly. Dimensions were all over the map, but because they needed them on the line, someone (not me) signed a deviation to use them. This pissed me off, I had our secretary go back through our scrap tickets and found 800 cranks that according to the new dimensions, would have be useable.
Then the project went to Belgium, good riddance. Later, it came back to the Juarez MX plant for casting, machining, and assembly. Labor savings was like $70 per engine!
Guess who got sent down there for 10 weeks to get the machining inspection going, YEP you guessed it! HAd a 12 station dial machining center that came from Belgium to do the gearcase. Could not get it to run right, it would misfire and crash right from the get go. Then someone realized it wa wired for the 50 cycle electricity in Europe, so all new electric motors were installed to cure that problem.
My biggest problem was explaining to the Mexican people assigned to inspection what an inch was - they are metric minded. I finally took all the numbers off the gauging and highlighted the dimensional bands in green, yellow, and red - they understood stoplights - green on the gauge was OK, and so on.
Only good thing about the Juarez trip was the extremely pretty Mexican girls working in the plant! I was not married at the time, but they could not go out with us Gringos - their Mamma would have a fit!

[2us70]

Just the kind of rig you would see all over in the early 70s.

[WaterZebra]

I was heavily involved in th Gnat's production - first in FDL where we machined blocks, rods, cranks,misc. aluminum parts, and the first gearcases and internals. Someone then found a Japanese vendor for the cranks - but because I had the gauging to check them, they came to Plant 4 before assembly. Dimensions were all over the map, but because they needed them on the line, someone (not me) signed a deviation to use them. This pissed me off, I had our secretary go back through our scrap tickets and found 800 cranks that according to the new dimensions, would have be useable.
Then the project went to Belgium, good riddance. Later, it came back to the Juarez MX plant for casting, machining, and assembly. Labor savings was like $70 per engine!
Guess who got sent down there for 10 weeks to get the machining inspection going, YEP you guessed it! HAd a 12 station dial machining center that came from Belgium to do the gearcase. Could not get it to run right, it would misfire and crash right from the get go. Then someone realized it wa wired for the 50 cycle electricity in Europe, so all new electric motors were installed to cure that problem.
My biggest problem was explaining to the Mexican people assigned to inspection what an inch was - they are metric minded. I finally took all the numbers off the gauging and highlighted the dimensional bands in green, yellow, and red - they understood stoplights - green on the gauge was OK, and so on.
Only good thing about the Juarez trip was the extremely pretty Mexican girls working in the plant! I was not married at the time, but they could not go out with us Gringos - their Mamma would have a fit!

It's funny how some business strategist will propose placing production work in some other country just to save a buck on evil "labor" then to find all these other variables in the production system equation. Early Honda Civic engine assembly used a selection of 4 different crankshaft bearing shell combinations to absorb the variability in the crankshaft dimensions. We found that economics got wrapped up into the picture as well. If we gave our vendors a deal on the tolerances (loose) we expected a deal on the per item cost (cheaper) or vice versa. We also learned that educating our vendors on how their production component fit into the overall production objective worked far better than just "spec'ing" it out to them.

[largecar91]

looks like MX15 with 650XS