On Sun, 08 Oct 2017 11:50:06 -0400, John H
wrote:
On Sat, 07 Oct 2017 23:10:23 -0400, wrote:
On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 21:32:01 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:
As far as can be told here, your "expertise" in boating is limited to
buying non-collectible firearms from a Ruger auction site. I'm not a fan
of I/O's for several reasons, but I've seen - literally - thousands of
boats of all sizes out on the ocean powered by I/O's.
The only I/Os we see here are big go fast boats with 7+ liter V-8s in
them or snow birds who have not figured out they have the wrong boat
yet. Even now, the go fast crowd is migrating to trip or quad
outboards. I see a Yellowfin 36 out at the beach now and then running
trip 7 Marines.
I/Os may be fine as a northern trailer boat but they suck in tropical
salt water, especially if they are raw water cooled. The last time I
did a survey, we had 78 boats in my little 120 resident neighborhood.
None are I/Os.
Half are Yamaha, a quarter Mercury and the remaining quarter are
Zekes, 2 smoke OMCs, One Etec and one Honda. I don't remember the last
time I saw an I.O on the river but I am sure it had out of state
numbers on it.
I understand the I/O is pretty popular on the Chesapeake but that may
just be because it is not really salt water and that the are cheap. It
may make sense for a person looking at a 3-4 month season.
My experience with the I/O in the Chesapeake taught me to never, ever have another I/O in salt
water. Many folks here suggested that Donnee look at an outboard instead of an I/O, but, of course,
Donnee knew better.
Outboards have a hard time matching the horsepower at any given price
point when compared to a mass produced car engine.
The problem is that auto manufacturer did not design that engine for
the marine environment. You can mitigate some of the problems with
fresh water cooling but not all. Running in the frigid water up north,
flushing/rinsing after every use, storing on a trailer and a very
short season also helps make them last longer.
For someone like me who runs in 80+ degree salt water 3-4 times a
week, never flushes and has a 12 month season, an I/O would have been
trash decades ago. I have repowered 3 times (at around 3000 hours).
With an outboard, that is a few hour job requiring nothing but a come
along and a few hand tools. You are instantly a virgin from the
throttle handle to the prop. On an I/O it is a huge job to swap an
engine and you still have not done anything with the out drive. I am
also not standing on my head in the bilge trying to do the most
trivial maintenance.
Up on the trailer, everything is a stand up job and you can see
everything you are working on.
I suppose if you just drop it off at the dealer and come back a week
or two later, when they are done, that is not an issue. It is only
money but wasn't money the reason you got the I/O in the first place..