New Aritcle - thoughts on a Mercury Racing 3.4-liter R-series engine

[NeedOne]

Since this thread is rooted in 'what if'....
What if Merc bought/partnered with CITS on their non-oil burning 2 stroke technology, and adapted it to the 2.5..
Make it a drop on powerhead that fits existing 2.5 stuff... I assume Mercury still has the molds & tooling for 2.5 components + peripheral engineering is done & proven.
Low-ish risk, high ROI for Mercury and keeps the 2.5 alive & everybody is happy ?
Citsengine.com

[PanRonnie]

and if i am not mistaken you could regrind the original cam to a slightly altered profile by installing wider cam rocker rollers
one camshaft should be cheaper than 4 right?

[HydroSkreamin]

A while back .. you had said to me (the group) that you don't condone all of the business practices by the mother ship .. when I spoke about parts pricing.
For a career company man, I thought it was a bold statement usually reserved for one on one conversation with fellow lifers that exists right up until the point that another lifer is within ear shot, or joins the conversation. They remind me of fish flip-flopping on a hot deck.
Just curious, did you get called on the carpet over that one. ??? (You can PM me the answer, the group will understand)

I understand the center console market My county's trucks have a seal that say "sailfish capital of the world" on all the doors ..
I was under the impression that the mothership was a big outfit in many big buildings. saying that they put all of their eggs in the big boat market, says to me that they have a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time. God help them if the bottom falls out of the current house of cards.
Saying that only a handful of guys would buy a small, light weight, powerful engine once every fifteen years .. is just more company kool-aid. Go to the sand bar in any town Florida on the weekend and you will see ten or more Yamaha's to every Mercury.
Same for the weekday offshore charters. You'd have to have on rose colored glasses to see anything different.
How bout your fellow 450r ginny pigs that stood in line to pay full pop for a half dozen units. Yea I know, **** the wty guys, they already have their money. .. they got new motors to build. Not to sell to loyal franchised dealers, **** them too, there's new transoms waiting. Bout the time some of them got their motors .. Suprise we replaced them with 500's ... reminds of a game when I was a kid . What was it called ... musical chairs ..
I know the market has swung to guys that want to take their family out. Can't bebothered with bending over to fill an oil bag, hear granny complain about how the smell of Klotz is making her sick .. pusswa society. But there are still hard core guys out there that aren't afraid to put in the time and effort to build what they want. Some of them like myself, you will never hear me beg Mercury or anyone else .. for anything ...... ever

As far as parts pricing goes, I spoke my mind more than once internally on that subject, and actually plead a few cases that got adjusted, but lost more than I won. It's not a secret, and believe it or not, you can speak your mind without getting fired if you back it with facts and present it without emotion.

As far as aftermarket parts for the 3.0L 150 4-stroke, get after it! You are just the man for the job. As I stated, the guy that modifies it is married to it. Wanna know how I know?... There's been plenty of science projects out of my shop that ran great. I love it when someone calls me 15 years later with jetting questions for something I built. At least it's still running, I say to myself.

Unfortunately, as I stated, it's really economically tough to bolt big dollar engines on the back of our "little" boats, so that leaves modifying your own stuff. Not everyone is capable of doing it, and very few are able to follow instructions to the tee, then wonder why it broke when they decided that Rec90 was close enough to premium fuel and rattle it to death. Happens all the time.

So, at some point I believe it will happen, but it's not going to be as easy as it was in the 80's and 90's, as the aftermarket also has their hands tied to be associated with non-emissions compliant engines. It's not impossible, it's just costly. Most modified engines wouldn't even make it past the EPA warmup procedure, much less a full emissions run. Run WOT until the oil stabilized to +/- 1ºC. That takes at least 12 minutes with most modern OB's. Then another 3 minutes to get your complete sample point. Oh, and you don't get to pick the fuel, it has to be special emissions fuel (which doesn't have remotely the same quality as what you'd really like to run, including octane number). Until someone can do that (as I said, it's not impossible, but it's not as easy as everyone thinks), it's going to be a tough row to hoe. I honestly hope someone does, just so our group can have some fun screwing around with stuff that isn't stock.

The rules have changed, and as long as you can fly under the radar, you're OK. As soon as you are public, you've got a target on your back.

Remember the 2.5XS? Mercury Racing's last gasoline powered 2-stroke hi-performance effort? All the effort and tooling that went into that....do you know how many were sold? 104. Let that sink in.....104. You can't cover development and tooling on 104 engines, and there was zero chance of making them emissions compliant with 2006 and beyond regs. Joe owns 4% of them, and they were a great running engine. Know how most of them died? People decided that they knew better than the factory what fuel was good enough to run in them. There's a good amount still running, but those guys listened and took proper care, but John Q Public needs idiot-proof engines. And I've found when you make something idiot-proof, they come up with a better idiot. Pretty sure everyone here can relate to this.

Good luck with aftermarket performance enhancements, I'm looking forward to seeing them. Someone needs to do it.

[Chaz]

I commend you on you stance and effort as far as parts pricing goes. You have to understand that when I tell a guy you need this $40.00 part, I can get it for $279.95 . Perhaps you should look around and see if you can get it cheaper, or find a used one. They tend to get a little emotional .. the hate doesn't come my way, the mother ship get's the black eye.

I have a policy, I don't invest my money in my customers dreams. I do what I'm told, and if their toy breaks, they own both half's of it.
I don't see what I do as "science projects" instead .. tried and true hot rodding practices that really got started when GI's came home from WW2 .As the good book says .. there's nothing new under the sun ..

You summed it up .. Mercury's customer base is to stupid to know the diff between rek 90 and 93 or as I prefer , gas jacked up to closer to 95-100 .
I'm sure it takes more work to dumb down a 3.4L to make 150 hp , than it is to make it produce a clean burning 350 hp ..

I've had a 2.5xs come thru here .. Seemed to be parts from the left over bin. Any money spent on tooling was that engineer's dream on intake noise reduction. No offence but that POS was ugly, killed power ... did I say the plenum guts were ugly
No wty .. what happened, they use every scrap they had to build the 104 units sold .. ??

I noticed you ignored some key points I made .. No problem, I like you , so I won't rub it in ...

[Chaz]

Ronnie, they got the heart shaped area correct on the quench side of the chamber.



Current chamber design has the intake side of the deck following the bore diameter to the sparkplug hole. Promotes one direction swirl and complete cylinder filling.



The exhaust side should be a nice funnel shape on both the valley and outboard sides. Not much you can do about the valve shrouding the cylinder wall side, just improve on the high flowing areas.
It's common practice to cut the deck down to just shy of the intake valve seat. makes the chamber smaller and aids in short side flow ..



The Porsche people I work for have the cam followers, camshaft and valves DLC coated. They run extreme spring pressures and race for 24 hours.
I would think that a reground cam and some springs that are 125 - 150 on the seat and maybe a dry film coating like I use on piston skirts .. would be all you need ..

And no .. skreemin, I don't use the words .. Farfugnuttin, VW, Karmin-Gia, or say I'd like to build a 997 with a 6.2LS .. when I'm over there ..

[PanRonnie]

What about pistons with the piston pin higher up in the piston?
You can use longer rods to reduze side loading and have more valve clearance for later intake valve closing

[Chaz]

I don't know what the rod ratio is for those motors. But you divide the stroke into the rod length .. to get your answer. As a baseline, the old SBC 350 is 1.63 .. I'll bet a canoli the Merc is closer to 2 : 1 already.
Long rods, increase dwell time @ TDC .. actually reducing piston to valve clearance. The cam profile in the picture you posted .. looks so mild , that it would be like how many of today's econo box's are built. The timing belt could come off and it would never touch a valve.
I have a Pro/ Mod racer friend .. when asked where to put the intake center line on my 706 ci nitrous motor, he said .. bout 80 . What ? Yea ya need ya at least .080 piston to valve to stay out of trouble. rest of that **** don't matter ...

[Greg G]

A lot of unique and interesting ideas in this thread but IMO it is really very simple.

Mercury already has the parts it needs to produce a 225R. You add the sporty, change to solid mounts, up the RPM on the ECU and offer full warranty. You would need to design a super lightweight cowl which would lower the weight by about 30lbs.

To be a company with $3.5B in topline, with a dedicated "race" department, and not fill in your portfolio with a V6 R option is plain stupid. You already have the engineering done and the parts on the shelf so quantity sold is somewhat irrelevant from a brand leadership perspective. The industry and public optics of a full portfolio should be what drives a 225R option.

[PanRonnie]

Yet they felt a gear ratio of 2.08 was very sporty!?

[PanRonnie]

Guess you don't need new rocker arms if you can adjust the ball side enough
So new valve cam grind and valve springs should go a long way

[David]

I went to the Toronto Boat Show yesterday. There were exactly zero boats that could use a Mercury Racing 200 or 225. LOL, there were zero boats that I would want to own.

About the 2.5XS. Was it 2005 only? Preceded by the Gen 1 200XS and succeeded by the Gen 2 200XS ROS?

Did the 300XS debut in 2011?

[Chaz]

A lot of unique and interesting ideas in this thread but IMO it is really very simple.

Mercury already has the parts it needs to produce a 225R. You add the sporty, change to solid mounts, up the RPM on the ECU and offer full warranty. You would need to design a super lightweight cowl which would lower the weight by about 30lbs.

To be a company with $3.5B in topline, with a dedicated "race" department, and not fill in your portfolio with a V6 R option is plain stupid. You already have the engineering done and the parts on the shelf so quantity sold is somewhat irrelevant from a brand leadership perspective. The industry and public optics of a full portfolio should be what drives a 225R option.

Hey .. hey brudda G , stop trying to make sense ..

David

I went to the Toronto Boat Show yesterday. There were exactly zero boats that could use a Mercury Racing 200 or 225. LOL, there were zero boats that I would want to own.

Yea, they don't care about their dealers or people who already own boats. They want to fill brand new transoms.

Like I said, DON'T BEG, **** - em , build your own ...

Nuff used motors out there to put together a half a dozen powerheads, for what they charge for a new motor that you don't like anyway ...

Good pictures Ronnie .. I'll look closer ..

[FUJIMO]

[FUJIMO]

[FUJIMO]