Hi,
I have a Mercury 2001 4 stroke 25hp Bigfoot on an 11' Caribe dinghy. I have had several Mercury mechanics work on it and now am getting to the point of paying bad money after good. The dink and motor ride mostly on the roof of our trawler but when we want to use it, it needs to run.
So - what brand replacement motor should I be looking at? Particular model or features?
Any that I should stay away from?
Thanks
Our club runs a fleet of chase boats for our racing program. They are small boats from a 13' Whaler, a bunch of 14' & 16' Maritime skiffs, a center console RIB and an 18' Maritime Skiff.
During the season they are in use about 7+/- hours per day. Reliability has been followed and over the years and we've run all brands of motors until just recently.
From worst to best reliability on this fleet over last 20+/- years:
Suzuki (far too many issues to even list)
Mercury (same as above)
Tohatsu (older two strokes pretty decent but lots of nickel & dime stuff)
Honda (mostly corrosion issues great motor otherwise)
Evinrude/Johnson (older two stroke models were very reliable)
Yamaha (older two strokes were bullet proof)
Over the last 5 years the best reliability has been the Evinrude ETEC motors. Light weight, reasonably priced, quiet and they can idle all day long, if needed, without stalling or loading up..
They have been so good we are slowly replacing all the motors in the fleet with the new ETEC's. Before the ETEC motors our waterfront mechanic spent all day everyday fixing something OB motor related. Now days we have him doing house & grounds work because the ETEC's have been so reliable.
Having said that, if you are not going to be US based, then I would probably look at Yamaha. I am not personally satisfied with Honda's corrosion reliability as of yet, otherwise they are very reliable.. Then motors themselves are great but they don't have their corrosion/paint issues figured out yet..
FWIW, the motor on my work boat is a 1996 Johnson two stroke, you'll need to pry that puppy from my cold dead fingers.
That antique Johnson replaced a 10 year newer horribly corroded Honda 4 stroke.
Our RIB has a 9.8 two stroke Tohatsu and a 2.5HP Yamaha 4-stroke.. We use the Tohatsu 95% of the time as the Yamaha won't run on anything but ethanol free gas without developing "issues". My brother also has the Yamaha 2.5 HP four stroke and he uses ethanol free 100LL AVGAS in it.
My .02, if I
had to buy a new motor for my work boat, right now, it would be an ETEC..