ETEC durability vs Yamaha/Mercury 4 Strokes

[Dave S]

They all go boom......keep them away from water works best.

[TwzteD]

I cant find it now but mercury posted a video on their you tube page a while back, in Thailand they have water taxis with over 10,000 hours on the original 60 hp 4 stroke 4 cylinder power heads, granted most of their time was spent around 3500 rpm according to the diagnostic software they showed but thats a lot of reliable hours, keep in mind those engines are made in china also.. Id say thats a reliable engine.

[TwzteD]

found it

[RSWORDS]

I personally work on a 150 mercury with almost 15,000 hors on it. The gear case was just resealed and the internals looked good and where in spec. No other issues.

I showed out rep the computer (he happened to be there) and he said Disney uses the 150 on there water taxis and at 20,000 they replace them.

I have 3 rotted out/blown 150 Yamaha's in my junk pile (2 from waterman and 1 from recreational use) the salt water here kills em and rots the cyl walls. Have yet to see a stroke mercury rotted out.

Also he can get the seapro version of the mercury 150 which has the 2 year comercial warrenty vs yamahas 1 year

[checkmate45]

Detonation can happen at any point in the hours running. Could have been a 190 hr melt down, funny how it goes. What's the factory saying about running temp, throttle position, rpm etc? I'm sure they had a good look. Will it turn 6+ empty, just wondering? I'd think you would want it on the rev limiter empty.

When I hooked up to the one that just blew the other day it had been very hot at 160hours and from what the etec tech said yesterday it is very common to drop the top 2 cylinders. I believe it does pull close to 6000rpm empty. They never drive it wot unless its the owner driving empty. They typically run them around 4500 rpm.

They have not had any failures under the 400 hour mark which makes me think the injectors on the newer engines are not as good as the older ones. His original 150hp etecs went up into rhe 1500-2000 hour range. The newer they get the lower the hours get before failure

[msm]

I personally work on a 150 mercury with almost 15,000 hors on it. The gear case was just resealed and the internals looked good and where in spec. No other issues.

How many hours do the fuel supply modules last?

[FMP]

Assuming that an injector failing caused the lean out to detonation and not detonation by another reason then hurt the injector.

[checkmate45]

Assuming that an injector failing caused the lean out to detonation and not detonation by another reason then hurt the injector.

Quite possible. Though the engine has not thrown any codes other than the ones related to overheat at 160 hours.

What I also got from the tech was with the type of usage if they are not letting the engines warm up 100% before driving they can be starving the upper rod bearings from oil. I have not been able to tear down any of the failed engines so I do not know exactly what cause of failure is. Im only going off of the debris on the plug and what ends up being installed on the replacement block

[baja200merk]

We have a few g1 175s with 3600 hours. One customer has a pair with over 2000hours and they spent a night under salt water 800hrs ago. Another customer has 5200 on a pair of g1 200HO. Good fuel good oil is key. Another customer has about 1500 on his was having a problem getting water in fuel after a few months he finally fixed it but it toasted 5 out of 6 injectors. Still running he just took it to the keys.

We have seen commercial engines exploded with very low hours we plug them in to find a long list of knock events in the occurred faults. The fuel these days is losing 1.5 points of octane every 30 days. I can take you to the Yamaha grave yard (rebuilder) and 5 mins down the road is the suzuki grave yard. We do a bunch of welding corroded blocks up for both of those companies.

We just sold a 340hour Yamaha 250 to one of them it rotted a hole in the block and ran on salt water all 6 cyls had low compression. Another 300 hour Honda was filling oil pan with salt water old man paid 2 hrs to pull the heads cause he didn’t believe it was junk.

the high hour 60* do have an issue with cracking sleeves. I’ve also seen wrist pin bearings fail for no apparent reason which is why we upgrade them.

[RSWORDS]

How many hours do the fuel supply modules last?

Never replaced one that wasnt due to the owner putting water through it via the gas tank. And even then its usually just the pump

[msm]

Thanks.

[checkmate45]

We have a few g1 175s with 3600 hours. One customer has a pair with over 2000hours and they spent a night under salt water 800hrs ago. Another customer has 5200 on a pair of g1 200HO. Good fuel good oil is key. Another customer has about 1500 on his was having a problem getting water in fuel after a few months he finally fixed it but it toasted 5 out of 6 injectors. Still running he just took it to the keys.

We have seen commercial engines exploded with very low hours we plug them in to find a long list of knock events in the occurred faults. The fuel these days is losing 1.5 points of octane every 30 days. I can take you to the Yamaha grave yard (rebuilder) and 5 mins down the road is the suzuki grave yard. We do a bunch of welding corroded blocks up for both of those companies.

We just sold a 340hour Yamaha 250 to one of them it rotted a hole in the block and ran on salt water all 6 cyls had low compression. Another 300 hour Honda was filling oil pan with salt water old man paid 2 hrs to pull the heads cause he didn’t believe it was junk.

the high hour 60* do have an issue with cracking sleeves. I’ve also seen wrist pin bearings fail for no apparent reason which is why we upgrade them.

They run xd 50 oil, he says he cant buy the xd100 oil in the 50 gallon drums. I just saw the fuel truck the other day, I think it is in about once a month depending on time of year. I have not seem a knock code on any of these engines which I found surprising based on the aluminum in the tip of the spark plug.

I rebuilt his 130hp etec a few years back as it was out of warranty. It had 2 cracked sleeves, both on the same side (#2/4). It also had cracked the top of one piston, hairline on the top and wide enough on the bottom to put a screwdriver in

[Bodhi]

Those etecs are also self destructing at the 100:1 factory oiling. All the owners I know get the program and switch their motors to 50:1 and then they last.
I have trouble getting on board with anything fourstroke, but everyone I talk to raves about the merc 150. Guys at the marina with 1000's hrs and nothing but 100hr services.

[baja200merk]

The oil ratio setting is minimal they idle at like 400:1 the early ones had some issues if at idle for long time they’d scuff when they stab it but the later stuff doesn’t have any oil issues.

We have a box of cracked factory pistons another box of pistons with the pins falling out. We do not use brp pistons (neither do my friends who work for brp ) they are a weak link. Brp is aware of it and had a bulletin in 2010 but we have pulled down a hundred later models with piston pin migration issues. One 3.4 was on a tournament bass boat. Pounded on for 300hours wide open everywhere (these bass guys can f up an anvil with a rubber mallet) a stump ripped the lower off at 70mph. Perfect compression I put a camera in the bores and could see what looked like pin marks. Sure enough pulled it down 4 of 6 pistons had pins I could push back in with my nail.

[Ing]

I work for a tour boat company and we run twin Merc 4 strokes and never an issue. The torque is far superior than the ETECS for partuclar application he is using. My personal boat has twin Verados. I would never go back to a 2 stroke.