Rebuilding and Debugging by Chris Carson's Marine Service

[fmaxwell]

I wanted to give a shout-out to Chris Carson's Marine Service (CCMS) which recently rebuilt my 2000 Mercury 225 EFI powerhead.

I was on plane at about 4,000RPM and advanced the throttle more. All of a sudden I heard a very loud noise from my outboard as it reached about 4,500RPM. I stopped to investigate and could not determine the exact cause, but I knew it was bad. I dumped a gallon of oil into my fuel tank and nursed it back to the boat ramp with the engine running just above idle speed. I did some diagnosis the next day in my driveway and discovered that the lowest starboard side piston had about 1/8” play like a rod bearing had catastrophically failed.

I did my homework and decided to ship the powerhead from Virginia to Chris Carson's in Key Largo, FL (rather than entrust it to a much closer firm in PA about which I saw some horror stories). Unfortunately, shortly after it got to Key Largo, Hurricane Irma hit. That put a delay into things, but within a couple of weeks, CCMS returned a completely rebuilt powerhead that looked and ran like new. It came back with six, matched .020 over pistons, a set of his fiber reeds, new crank, etc. The parts quality -- even the much-better-than-Sierra base gasket he supplied -- and workmanship seem great. I've got about 10 or 11 hours on the outboard and it's running better than ever. Throttle response is very crisp and I've gained about 2-3mph. I expect that it will serve me well for many years.

Chris Carson determined that a mud dauber wasp nest had been sucked into the engine, doing massive damage to a rod bearing, rod, crank, main seal, piston, and cylinder. He was a tremendous help throughout, answering emails and phone calls and providing all of the advice and tech support anyone could ask for -- even when I was doing other tasks on the midsection and lower unit preparatory to getting the powerhead back (motor mounts, impeller, anodes, tilt & trim motor, etc.).

I could have saved money by finding someone closer to fix it on the cheap, but I'd rather pay to have the work done right the first time than pay to have it done again.

Highly recommended.