Jim and Becky wrote:
I'm looking at a nice Blackfin with twin '97 Johson 225's.
I'm cautious when I think of the late 90's when OMC made faulty Ficht
outboards.
I'm thinking '97 '98,'99?
I know the injection system had problems then a fuel filter/reservoir issue.
Did all units need to be corrected by an OMC mechanic?
Is there a list of serial numbers for those corrected?
Are there certain years/models to be avoided?
Did Bombardier sell OMC if so what do we know about the buyer relative to
any warrant?


I



It's a defective design & while Ficht, OMC, then Bomb of course never
actually admitted that, the history confirms it (OMC 7000 jobs chucked &
US 1.3 billion of pension money peed against the wall) Bomb tried to
deceptively drop the Ficht name but quickly realised that these days
with NGs like this these, the old dealer delivered scams won't work
anymore, so sold it.

The core issue is that they try to deliberately run the engine very
very lean at lower revs to get through the EPA regs, but it's been well
known, understood & documented since before WW2 that this is at best
very risky & in a goodly percentage of instances fatal to the engine.
Leading to piston heat buildup, then when full fuel is re supplied as
power is quickly increased, it leads to full destructive detonation. (
the head of OMC actually admitted a Ficht failure rate of 1 in 5 !!!)

So be very careful because 1 in 5 Fichts fail & even accepting that all
OMC & anyone connected to them were Ficht liars so it was probably more
than that:-). Even so at 1 in 5 it's a pretty sad lottery. Yes the boat
will be very cheap on account of it having a Ficht, but ........

Just in case you come across a similar boat with an Optimax on it be
also aware that they are better but not by much. Notwithstanding they go
about it a totally different mechanical way, the very same basic design
fault is there.

No manufacturer has managed to run engines lean at power & not suffer
horrendous failure rate through detonation, & plenty have tried in the
past, including Honda, Chrysler & NASA. (it "is" very basic rocket science)

K