"Harry Krause" wrote in message
news:O7ydnU_Wmf4ViD_cRVn- Yeah, but...you're living with the outboard
motors of 30-40 years ago.
All the new high horsepower outboards, two cycle or four cycle, are
dependent upon electronics and lots of strange parts that weren't on the
old outboards. Even my old-tech Merc 90 and 115 went teats-up on me two
times each for the same damned electronic part failure (you know which
one, too), until Merc finally realized it had a problem with LOTS of
this same part, and changed something in production or supplier to fix
it. The new diesel inboards are electronics-bound these days, too. These
engines are getting more electronic so as to meet pollution standards.

30-40 is a stretch. I *tend* to cut off at 1988 though I've worked on a few
of the 3 cylinder 90's and those 2+2 fours. The difference is that with a
carbed motor if you have an electronic failure it'll not run till you fix it
but it's rarely catastrophic. With DFI an electronic failure that gets you
too lean will cause a melt-down.

Where I do agree with Karen is that the manufacturers trotted the DFI stuff
out too soon and used the public as the beta-test platform. OMC paid dearly
for this folly and Mercury took a pretty good black eye with some of the
early Opti's too.

I'm all for pollution standards.... but I think it's niggling to have them
impact the small markets like boats and OHRV's when tightening the car/truck
standards has so much more impact. I bet if the Queen Mary II was nuclear
powered instead of diesel it would offset ALL the outboard emissions with
the one clean boat.

-W