J Merrill wrote:
"K. Smith" wrote A 101 so that even you may get a
rubimentary understanding;

(i) The only way it seems a crankcase transferred 2 stroke can viably
get through the EPA rules is by running extremely lean mixtures at low
to medium revs. In the early days OMC dealers were claiming 40-1
mixtures but once the failures started all hard technical material was
withdrawn.


Mixture has nothing to do with meeting the EPA requirements in any direct
sense.
The problem with the conventional ported two stroke outboard is emissions of
unburned hydrocarbons. Since the incoming fuel/air charge is used to
displace the exhauste gases. Approx. 15% of the fuel/air mix passes in thru
the intake port and out thru the exhaust port without the benefit of having
been in the cylinder during a combustion phase.
Hence ways to significantly reduce the amount of unburned hydrocarbons in
the exhaust
a) seperate the airflow/scavenging from the fuel.
b) switch to a four stroke process where the piston scavenges the cylinder.
c) post burn the unburnt fuel in a catalytic converter.






Yes I agree with all you say, but I did say "viable" in the sense that
by the time you make a crankcase transferred engine clean it's as
complex heavy & expensive as a proper 4 stroke would have been in the
first place:-)

The Optimaxes are a classic as far as mechanical complexity being used
to claim success with a "simple" 2 stroke.

K

In article , "K. Smith"
wrote:

James Hebert wrote:
In article , "K. Smith"
wrote:


wrote:


[material deleted]

I also like to see more data and like to know where the original post
came from.


Here the reference to "the original post" is to a comment that three
Evinrude E-TEC motors had blown up at a fishing tournament held in Lake
Erie around July 24, 2005

[Karen replies]

These are a few just for you:


http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/003712.html



Thanks for citing my website as a part of your effort to discredit the
E-TEC, but I am afraid the article you cited contains not one word of
any problems with the E-TEC motor at a fishing tournament in Lake Erie
around July 24, 2005. As a matter of fact, all the articles in the cited
thread were posted about a week before the fishing tournament held in
Lake Erie around July 24, 2005.

I don't see how they corroborate the initial claim about all of these
engines blowing up. I am local to that area and have not heard anything
about it.


You see James this is the problem with forums such as yours, in this
case you nopt onloy feel compelled to support your site you also support
the latest DFI experiment called E-Tec? You even try to claim another
forums posts "must" be wrong because you say so:-)

There are many articles on my website which present information on the
E-TEC. Some report problems and their resolution. Others report no
problems. The content is not managed to present only one side or the
other. Participants report how _their_ E-TEC motors are working. That's
all.

The point I was making is that the article you cited contained no
mention of the incident at a Detroit River/Lake Erie fishing tournament.
I think it was misleading to cite the article you mentioned in
connection with the fishing tournament motors.


I did not say "your" forum mentioned blown E-Tecs although the poster
had asked for more data & where the original (blown E-tecs) post came
from, but his request wasn't limited to just that, it's patently clear
from the links where the information came from. Of course you'd never
allow that:-). I had derided the latest "upgrades" your site
conveniently gave material on them & clearly unbeknown to you much
mo-) People can read James even though you'd prefer they just
accepted your views without any review at all. Welcome to an open forum:-)

Because I actually do look over the articles that we carry on the
website, I often give some scrutiny to authors who appear suddenly with
tales of horror about their engines. Here is a good example of one of
these supposed E-TEC horror stories:

An article was submitted for publication in which the author claimed he
had purchased an E-TEC motor which subsequently failed after very short
use. This motor was allegedly replaced, and the replacement failed
even faster. This author claimed to be from Ontario. A check of the web
server's logs showed the article had been posted from a computer in
southern Europe. The email address provided was bogus. Messages to the
author's mail exchanger were all refused with "unknown recipient"
replies. Based on simple checking like this, I refused to publish this
horror story of E-TEC motors blowing up. There was very little evidence
that this was a legitimate report. Further, the fellow writing all of
this never showed up again nor contacted me to complain about it being
removed.

By my guess, this same fellow having this same sort of sport by
inventing these tales of blown up motors also posted to another on-line
forums. His article was carried for a few days, but after requests for
more information, such a serial numbers and a dealer name, went
unanswered, the game was up and that article wase also removed by the
administrator of that other moderated forums.

I am afraid these days it is a simple matter for people to anonymously
submit total falsehoods and have them widely circulated. Perhaps this is
the case here, with the "open" nature of USENET. You're citing a
incident in which you report three E-TEC motors have failed, yet you are
12,000 miles away from where it happened. I live about 25 miles away
from where it happened and have never heard a word of it.

I spent a few minutes searching using GOOGLE and I could not find any
mention of an E-TEC engine failing at that fishing tournament, except
for the single report you have cited.

My preference is very strong for first-hand accounts of events where
very new and very expensive engines blow up. There is a lot of dock talk
and stories of friends of a friend, and so on, but a real first-hand
account is much more reliable. So rather than you (fourth-hand) citing
some anonymous fellow (third-hand) reporting on something he heard
(second-hand) about what happened to an angler at fishing tournament
(first-hand), the story would be much more compelling if we could just
hear it right from the guy who owned the motor. The problem is that
these first-hand accounts seem to be much harder to come by than
recitation of second- or third-hand information. Next thing you know
we'll have someone citing this thread (fifth-hand) to prove that three
E-TEC motors blew up.


If you had decided to actually find out about this technology you would
already know why I say Ficht failed outright & to a lesser but still
unacceptable extent Optimax. You're correct I am an Ozzy & was well
familiar with Orbital long before Brunswick came into it. They'd been
trying to flog it for years prior as had Ficht but none of the real
engine people had taken it up & so far still haven't??? or do you say
otherwise??

Brunswick does seem to be perhaps on the verge of giving up on the
OptiMax. They have spent a significant amount of money ("millions")
giving customers replacement power heads for all the OptiMax engines
that blew up in the field. But that water over the dam, I think the real
reason Brunswick is moving away from OptiMax is to push Verado. If they
had not developed Verado (and spent all that money doing it), they would
probably be content with OptiMax. They do seem to have worked the bugs
out of the OptiMax--at least they don't have to give away so many free
replacement power heads.

By the way, a good measure of how many warranty failures there are for
an engine is the availability of "factory refurbished" engines. In the
case of OptiMax there were droves of them for sale from Mercury. That
should have said something.


Over some years I've explained in detail why & exactly how the DFIs
including Orbital Optimax would fail & sadly for many boaters, OMC
employees & unionists' pensions I was right. Of course as you promote &
boot lick the suppliers you don't wish to even acknowledge these facts.
You should read a truly "open" forum like here, then you'd know that the
OMC dealers were well aware of the defective nature of the Fichts &
continued to push them because they were getting up to 30% agg of
rebates & other sundry kickbacks on them. It was all well documented &
discussed here as the bankruptcy court dealt with OMC & the dealers
trying to get themselves onto the list of creditors for their so called
rebates:-)


[the usual story on two-stroke DFI's inevitable doom deleted]

So James if you've read this & even partly got a handle on it, now go &
re read the link I posted to your site, do you see the issue with the so
called "upgrades"??? also ask yourself why do different boats, different
props etc seem to experience the "roughness" at different engine
speeds??? Given that the spruikers will not give any real technical
material & the dealers certainly have none, then I'm happy to use your
site's material in support of my position.

I have read your analysis many times. It does seem to have some sound
reasoning, but I find that it applies to just about all two-strokes. In
particular, I find most all outboards are running quite rough in the
1,500 to 2,500 RPM range. None of them seem to delight in pushing a boat
around at that speed, as it is often a speed where the boat is not on
plane and the engine is really struggling. The nature of each boat and
the propeller chosen makes for different ranges where these rough
problems are more pronounced.

Generally I find the best wisdom to be: if the engine runs very rough at
a certain speed, don't run it at that speed. It is probably trying to
tell you something.

One thing that modern engine controllers have done is to provide the
manufacturer and his designers with more information about the speeds at
which the customers actually run their engines. This feedback is often
used to make tweaks in the engine firmware to work out problems.

I do not find the notion that software embedded in an engine's
controller might have to be upgraded to be proof of something being
intrinsically wrong with the entire engine design and combustion
process. On the contrary, I think that having the ability to easily
upgrade the software is something of a plus. If there are refinements in
the software which make the old engine run better, why not take
advantage of them?

So again just for clarity: I didn't allege your site said there were
blown up E-Tecs because you clearly would have none of that:-)

Actually, there are several long threads which discuss problems with
E-TEC motors which resulted in the power head being replaced under
warranty after a fairly short time, but the one you cited was not one of
them. So, you see, there are both sides of the story available.

But I did
note the OMC Ficht like "upgrades" were back & I was happy to link to
you showing the symptoms as these engine get to or near the mode change
point & the mixture is reverting back to normal, maybe just maybe on a
very hot piston????


So far I would not characterize these firmware updates as being
"Ficht-like". I believe that to fix problems with Ficht engines more was
required than just new firmware. From what I have learned, there have
been almost no mechanical changes in the E-TEC, although there was a
batch of motors which seemed to have gotten out of the factory with a
water cooling passage that needed to be drilled out--a bit of sloppy
manufacturing, yes, but not evidence of the inevitable doom of E-TEC.

No need to thank me for publicising your site for you indeed I'm glad to
& hope to again.

K

James Hebert wrote:
In article , "K. Smith"
wrote:


James Hebert wrote:

In article , "K. Smith"
wrote:



wrote:


[material deleted]


I also like to see more data and like to know where the original post
came from.


Here the reference to "the original post" is to a comment that three
Evinrude E-TEC motors had blown up at a fishing tournament held in Lake
Erie around July 24, 2005

[Karen replies]


These are a few just for you:


http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/003712.html



Thanks for citing my website as a part of your effort to discredit the
E-TEC, but I am afraid the article you cited contains not one word of
any problems with the E-TEC motor at a fishing tournament in Lake Erie
around July 24, 2005. As a matter of fact, all the articles in the cited
thread were posted about a week before the fishing tournament held in
Lake Erie around July 24, 2005.

I don't see how they corroborate the initial claim about all of these
engines blowing up. I am local to that area and have not heard anything
about it.


You see James this is the problem with forums such as yours, in this
case you nopt onloy feel compelled to support your site you also support
the latest DFI experiment called E-Tec? You even try to claim another
forums posts "must" be wrong because you say so:-)


There are many articles on my website which present information on the
E-TEC. Some report problems and their resolution. Others report no
problems. The content is not managed to present only one side or the
other. Participants report how _their_ E-TEC motors are working. That's
all.

The point I was making is that the article you cited contained no
mention of the incident at a Detroit River/Lake Erie fishing tournament.
I think it was misleading to cite the article you mentioned in
connection with the fishing tournament motors.



I did not say "your" forum mentioned blown E-Tecs although the poster
had asked for more data & where the original (blown E-tecs) post came
from, but his request wasn't limited to just that, it's patently clear
from the links where the information came from. Of course you'd never
allow that:-). I had derided the latest "upgrades" your site
conveniently gave material on them & clearly unbeknown to you much
mo-) People can read James even though you'd prefer they just
accepted your views without any review at all. Welcome to an open forum:-)


Because I actually do look over the articles that we carry on the
website, I often give some scrutiny to authors who appear suddenly with
tales of horror about their engines. Here is a good example of one of
these supposed E-TEC horror stories:

An article was submitted for publication in which the author claimed he
had purchased an E-TEC motor which subsequently failed after very short
use. This motor was allegedly replaced, and the replacement failed
even faster. This author claimed to be from Ontario. A check of the web
server's logs showed the article had been posted from a computer in
southern Europe. The email address provided was bogus. Messages to the
author's mail exchanger were all refused with "unknown recipient"
replies. Based on simple checking like this, I refused to publish this
horror story of E-TEC motors blowing up. There was very little evidence
that this was a legitimate report. Further, the fellow writing all of
this never showed up again nor contacted me to complain about it being
removed.

By my guess, this same fellow having this same sort of sport by
inventing these tales of blown up motors also posted to another on-line
forums. His article was carried for a few days, but after requests for
more information, such a serial numbers and a dealer name, went
unanswered, the game was up and that article wase also removed by the
administrator of that other moderated forums.

I am afraid these days it is a simple matter for people to anonymously
submit total falsehoods and have them widely circulated. Perhaps this is
the case here, with the "open" nature of USENET. You're citing a
incident in which you report three E-TEC motors have failed, yet you are
12,000 miles away from where it happened. I live about 25 miles away
from where it happened and have never heard a word of it.

I spent a few minutes searching using GOOGLE and I could not find any
mention of an E-TEC engine failing at that fishing tournament, except
for the single report you have cited.

My preference is very strong for first-hand accounts of events where
very new and very expensive engines blow up. There is a lot of dock talk
and stories of friends of a friend, and so on, but a real first-hand
account is much more reliable. So rather than you (fourth-hand) citing
some anonymous fellow (third-hand) reporting on something he heard
(second-hand) about what happened to an angler at fishing tournament
(first-hand), the story would be much more compelling if we could just
hear it right from the guy who owned the motor. The problem is that
these first-hand accounts seem to be much harder to come by than
recitation of second- or third-hand information. Next thing you know
we'll have someone citing this thread (fifth-hand) to prove that three
E-TEC motors blew up.



If you had decided to actually find out about this technology you would
already know why I say Ficht failed outright & to a lesser but still
unacceptable extent Optimax. You're correct I am an Ozzy & was well
familiar with Orbital long before Brunswick came into it. They'd been
trying to flog it for years prior as had Ficht but none of the real
engine people had taken it up & so far still haven't??? or do you say
otherwise??


Brunswick does seem to be perhaps on the verge of giving up on the
OptiMax. They have spent a significant amount of money ("millions")
giving customers replacement power heads for all the OptiMax engines
that blew up in the field. But that water over the dam, I think the real
reason Brunswick is moving away from OptiMax is to push Verado. If they
had not developed Verado (and spent all that money doing it), they would
probably be content with OptiMax. They do seem to have worked the bugs
out of the OptiMax--at least they don't have to give away so many free
replacement power heads.

By the way, a good measure of how many warranty failures there are for
an engine is the availability of "factory refurbished" engines. In the
case of OptiMax there were droves of them for sale from Mercury. That
should have said something.



Over some years I've explained in detail why & exactly how the DFIs
including Orbital Optimax would fail & sadly for many boaters, OMC
employees & unionists' pensions I was right. Of course as you promote &
boot lick the suppliers you don't wish to even acknowledge these facts.
You should read a truly "open" forum like here, then you'd know that the
OMC dealers were well aware of the defective nature of the Fichts &
continued to push them because they were getting up to 30% agg of
rebates & other sundry kickbacks on them. It was all well documented &
discussed here as the bankruptcy court dealt with OMC & the dealers
trying to get themselves onto the list of creditors for their so called
rebates:-)



[the usual story on two-stroke DFI's inevitable doom deleted]


So James if you've read this & even partly got a handle on it, now go &
re read the link I posted to your site, do you see the issue with the so
called "upgrades"??? also ask yourself why do different boats, different
props etc seem to experience the "roughness" at different engine
speeds??? Given that the spruikers will not give any real technical
material & the dealers certainly have none, then I'm happy to use your
site's material in support of my position.


I have read your analysis many times. It does seem to have some sound
reasoning, but I find that it applies to just about all two-strokes. In
particular, I find most all outboards are running quite rough in the
1,500 to 2,500 RPM range. None of them seem to delight in pushing a boat
around at that speed, as it is often a speed where the boat is not on
plane and the engine is really struggling. The nature of each boat and
the propeller chosen makes for different ranges where these rough
problems are more pronounced.

Generally I find the best wisdom to be: if the engine runs very rough at
a certain speed, don't run it at that speed. It is probably trying to
tell you something.

One thing that modern engine controllers have done is to provide the
manufacturer and his designers with more information about the speeds at
which the customers actually run their engines. This feedback is often
used to make tweaks in the engine firmware to work out problems.

I do not find the notion that software embedded in an engine's
controller might have to be upgraded to be proof of something being
intrinsically wrong with the entire engine design and combustion
process. On the contrary, I think that having the ability to easily
upgrade the software is something of a plus. If there are refinements in
the software which make the old engine run better, why not take
advantage of them?


So again just for clarity: I didn't allege your site said there were
blown up E-Tecs because you clearly would have none of that:-)


Actually, there are several long threads which discuss problems with
E-TEC motors which resulted in the power head being replaced under
warranty after a fairly short time, but the one you cited was not one of
them. So, you see, there are both sides of the story available.


But I did
note the OMC Ficht like "upgrades" were back & I was happy to link to
you showing the symptoms as these engine get to or near the mode change
point & the mixture is reverting back to normal, maybe just maybe on a
very hot piston????



So far I would not characterize these firmware updates as being
"Ficht-like". I believe that to fix problems with Ficht engines more was
required than just new firmware. From what I have learned, there have
been almost no mechanical changes in the E-TEC, although there was a
batch of motors which seemed to have gotten out of the factory with a
water cooling passage that needed to be drilled out--a bit of sloppy
manufacturing, yes, but not evidence of the inevitable doom of E-TEC.


No need to thank me for publicising your site for you indeed I'm glad to
& hope to again.

K


Firstly thanks for the reasoned reply James, & although I didn't agree
with your view on my posting of a link to your page in the premises I'm
happy to apologise if it upset you & do so unreservedly. I'll be much
clearer if I link to your pages in the future.

I agree Optimax is dead & again we probably disagree over the reasons,
however so long as they don't ruin more boaters enjoyment off into the
future who cares why they're going.

As for the E-Tec stuff I think we just plain disagree but not as much as
I expected actually, it seems you are like most boaters happy to accept
an old tech carbed 2 stroke OB will fail if a cyl is fed a lean
mixture?? my position remains that the very same thing dealers have made
millions upon millions fixing & happily explaining the cause as "gone
lean at power" is the reason the Fichts & I say E-tecs are at risk.

I'll be brave to suggest that the dealers or boat manufacturers
packaging them are being given more than generous (read 30% & over as
the ficht dealers demanded & mostly got) rebates etc to do so. So as
with Ficht we'll never truly know the situation because there's no more
dangerous a place to get than between a dealer/boat packager & a dollar:-)

As with Ficht I'll make my detailed predictions & give the reasons for
same then we'll see how it all goes. Given the higher temp pistons, the
treated bores, the special oil, the better fastenings etc etc I honestly
don't think as many E-Tecs will fail but enough that the technology is
doomed, just as all previous attempts at lean burn engines have been.

All the best

K