On Sat, 23 May 09, PhantMan wrote:
Anyhow, I'll try to "remember" to call Bob's next week, for a price
and to see what other information they may have to offer.

On Tue, 26 May 09, PhantMan wrote:
For anyone who may be interested, I remembered to call Bob's this
morning. Didn't get a lot of new information though. They are, in
fact, SEI units and they're $800 but the fellow I talked with didn't
know for sure where they are actually made. And Bob's only stocks the
complete lower unit, not just the housing. So he gave me the phone
number of a supplier who stocks OEM housings. The SEI unit comes with
a 3 year warranty so I asked if they had gotten any returns. He said
warranty claims would go through SEI but if there had been many
problems, he thinks he probably would have been getting some calls,
which he hasn't.
So I'm still without an independent customer review of this unit but,
I still have no "bad news" at this point.

...... so I called SEI -duh-
The units are assembled and tested in SEI's shop in Tampa. Parts come
from all over the world. The housing specifically... from "overseas".
(Close enough for me, I didn't feel the need to ask which "sea").
The warranty is a 3 year "no fault" warranty that works more like
insurance than a warranty, meaning, it covers impacts as well as
defects. So that tends to skew their warranty rate to the high side.
Warranty rate is 3%. If that's accurate, it doesn't sound high to me
(3 out of 100... including units with freeze damage or dragged up the
ramps)
They can also sell me a housing but the price is only about $100 less
than a complete unit. Needless to say, they don't sell many housings.

I also looked at the tech support forum on their website. Figured if
that didn't scare me away, nothing would. And it didn't. Although
virtually all of the tech questions involved sterndrives, not
outboards.

So I'm not yet convinced to roll the dice with my $800 bucks but I'm
leaning that way at the moment. I'm still interested to hear any first
hand experience though. Or even first hand rumors, hearsay, and
speculation if that's all I can get lol!

............. and that's my report :-)

Rick