I bought a Honda 20hp four stroke 2 years ago. Impeller went bad
within the first 3-4 hours. Dealer says I must have run it in the
sand. That's BS. If anything I babied the thing in deep, clear, clean
water. Maybe it dried out sitting in the crate -shrug- I dunno. But it
cost me $140.71 I still have very few hours on it. It's been in the
shop most of the time waiting on parts for this or that. They must
ship parts from Japan on a sailing raft or something.
If I had it to do over again, I'd buy a Mercury. And probably a 2
stroke 25hp. Even a new prop took over 2 weeks. Having said that, I
may soon buy a Yamaha 115hp four stroke for a different boat. I'm
still undecided between it and a 2 stroke Evinrude. Different
situation though.

Rick

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:08:53 -0400, wrote:
I bought a Merc 4 stroke 60 EFI Big Foot in Mar 2002.
1400 hours later, so far so good. There were two known problems that
Mercury fixed for free. One was the overheating problem caused by a
leak between the American "big foot" and the Yamaha inspired power
head. They fixed that on warranty. The other problem was a recall on
the voltage regulator (and mine was really bad). That was free too.
Other than that it has been good for me. How is everyone else doing?