Fish-Hawk.Net

E-tec?
Merc 2 stroke?
Merc 4 stroke?
Suzuki 4 stroke?
Honda?
Yamaha 2 stroke?
Yamaha 4 stroke?

I bought two new motors in the past 3 years. I bought a Suzuki 15 4 stroke for my small boat and an Evinrude E-tec 115 2 stroke for my big boat. Both motors are great and work well on the boats that I put them on. I think you have to choose based on the requirements that you have for the boat/motor package that you are looking at. If motor weight is not a consideration for you, then look at price, warranty, and availablity of servicing dealers. If you are going for max power/min weight then you are looking at the 2 strokes. Every motor will have someone who has a horror story and every motor will have someone who has never had a problem. It's just the luck of the draw...

I bought the Suzuki 15 to replace an older 9.9 on an old 14' aluminum. The motor was not a good match to that boat and I ended up getting a newer and stronger 14' aluminum to replace it. Smaller 4 strokes put out a small but noticable vibration that made every slightly loose bit on the aluminum rattle annoyingly. The motor seems smooth, but the vibration is there. This was confirmed by a friend who bought a Honda 15 for his Zodiac type boat this summer. My old boat rattled, his Zodiac hums. I find the Hondas are much quieter than that Suzukis, I haven't had any experience with 4 stroke Yamahas or Mercs. My Suzuki 15 was almost $1000 less than the sticker price on a Honda 15 when I bought it.

With the 115, I wanted to put the max power engine on the boat since it gets used for tubing, skiing, touring as well as fishing. The weight rating on the transom meant I would have been limited to a 90 with a 4 stroke, but was able to put on a 115 E-tec. I simply cannot get over how quiet this motor is. The fuel economy is fine but I find that I use more oil than the advertising lead me to believe.

Good luck with your search...

My next motor will be a Mercury 250 OptiMax Pro XS

-s

I have a 15 h.p. Honda and good lord the thing is quiet. I would purchase a Honda again without any concern. I love the silver colour to.

High Noon

I am so happy with my optimax that I will only have that type on my next boat.

Yamaha has the fewest warranty claims of any engine.
E tec has the most claims
Mercury a close second,
Honda a distant third and
Yamaha had the least amount of claims
Out of 1000 engins registered only 2 claims and one was from user error.

Yamaha isn't the fastest but it is the most reliable thats why they are the worlds largest outboard manufacturer.
Up untill recently all the Merc 4 stroke power heads were made for them by Yamaha.

Just my 2 cents

JP

E-TECH

This year I purchased a new boat. I upgraded to the biggest motor I could afford. A 115hp Merc OptiMax. So far I love the motor. It quite very good on fuel and oil injected. I love the bold black colour too.

If I had to buy another motor.... It would be a 135hp merc optiMax. As this is the max rating for my boat

I also run a 2006 8hp 4stroke kicker and its so quite I have to double check if its even running at times.

Then theres my duck boat. A 20 merc 2 stroke. This thing takes a beating.

I sure do love my Yammy 4 stroke, Never had any problems with it and it is pretty quiet.

DH

JP wrote:Yamaha has the fewest warranty claims of any engine.
Yamaha had the least amount of claims
Out of 1000 engins registered only 2 claims and one was from user error.
Yamaha isn't the fastest but it is the most reliable thats why they are the worlds largest outboard manufacturer.

Yeah they are known for reliability. A boat taxi compagny on lake Ontario used to have mercury engines on their boats. They put in quite a bit of hours on them being commercial. They used to change engines about 3 times a year on each boat. They didn't mind because it was under warranty.
But the down time got to them. They switched to Yamaha and they have been trouble free for 3 years and they put crazy amount of time on them.

My boat has a 1990 115hp yamaha 2 stroke oil injection. It's runs perfectly has even compression on all cylinders. It starts really fastl even in cold conditions. great running engine and very dependable.

My boat is for sale btw in the classifieds

My next motor is going to a yamaha, a VZ250HPDI. I don't I will every by a mercury again. To many bad stories with them.

Flyingdutchman

Honda 4 Stroke....hands down

That's what I have now and I'm sticking with Honda.

Woolly Bugger

I fished an flw stren series event this past July and it was a really good indication of what engines are the best especially after abuse. From what I noticed the Mercs seem to sound the worst(rapping) and smoked the most. The etecs were definately the fastest and most smokeless they also sounded the coolest but they had an evinrude tech on site and he was lined up every day after weigh in. And the Yamaha's seemed to be the most consistently well running engines almost all the other ones I came across sounded excactly the same even the older ones and heck my day one pro was using his motor to find submerged log piles and running shallow sand bars and his engine didn't even miss a beat.

I'm an OLD & LOYAL OMC fan - so much so that I've been told colour BLUE runs in my veins. I purchased my boat just as OMC went belly-up, and while my first choice was Evinrude, I had my doubts about the long term reliability of of Ficht technology, and was strongly leaning to the newer 4stokes, but didn't like the size of Honda, and while impressed with Suzuki, refused to go that route due to lack of dealers for servicing. OMC were selling 4strokes built by Suzuki, so that became my first choice, and plan B became a Yamaha 4 stroke. With patience and the excellent co-operation of my boat dealer, I finally ended up with a 140 HP Johnson(Suzuki) and after 5 years of flawless performance, I feel I made the right choice. Unfortunately this option is no longer available as Bombardier has since cancelled their arrangement with Suzuki. TOO BAD !! If I had to repower today it would be with Evinrude.

If it's a 2 stroke ETEC

If it's a 4 stroke Suzuki

I have a 1958 Johnson 3hp twin that runs like new.
I have a 1987 Evuinrude 9.9hp that pushes 25 hp and runs like new.
I have a 2001 Evinrude Fitch 200hp that was bought as a used lemon motor with supossedly less than 20 hours. I had blown up twice on another bass boat. It had a new powerhead supplied by BRP and had not been run. I installed the motor and had a bad fuel pump right away and the next year a bad TPS and that's it.
I suspect the dealer may have made a mistake that caused the initial failure and that would make 2 claims for one motor so you can see how quickly statistics can be scewed.

If I sell 2 motors and make one claim that's 50 percent. If I sell 20 motors and make 10 claims thats 50 percent which is the better average,

Stats are like opinions some are based in fact and some are made for speculation. Take them with a grain of salt and look at the source.

Go from experience not stats and JD Power for consumer stats on outboards and consumer satisfaction and you will see facts from owners not dealers nor manufacturers