On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:20:58 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
wrote:

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:57:56 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:

Some small tests I've run on Son of Yo Ho indicate about 3.5 mpg at 26
mph. At your boat's speeds, my mileage goes down. 10 miles an hour equals
about 2 mpg.
So what?

Score another one for ETEC. The slower I go, the less fuel I use.

WHOO HOO!!!

How big is Chuck's engine - that's pretty efficient.

Hmmm - come to think of it, Doug King has a Sundowner - I'll ask him
his fuel mileage next time I chat with him.

SWS,
Have you seen any market share analysis between ETEC and 4 stroke?
I would assume that Ficht problems have hurt ETEC to some degree.

No doubt about it at all. You get the idiot "revamped FICHT" all the
time. And, in some ways, they are revamped FICHTS. On the other hand
with the advent of new materials science plus some very clever
adaptation of other engine technologies, Bombardier took ETEC to where
FICHT would have gone had it lived a little longer. You have to
remember, Bombardier marketing and engineering types aren't stupid -
they are a big time company and didn't walk into the FICHT debacle
blindly. They saw the potential of FICHT, bought the technology and
ran with it. The results were the clearly superior ETEC engines.

It's like the idiot who posted about having gone through three
powerheads on his 200 FICHT. Right - and I'm the freakin' tooth
fairy. The 200s were never a problem other than routine stuff you run
into on other types of engines. The "problem" was fairly well
confined to the 150/175 blocks and even then, it wasn't as
catastrophic as it's made out to be. Power heads failed - no doubt
about it, but the Coast Guard over reacted to the situation and made
it worse under pressure from Mercury and Yamaha - or so I have been
told from some engineers who were involved in the process.

Bombardier even went to extremes to make sure the 150/175 ETECs were
right before they released them into the product stream - they were
delayed for a while until they could be absoutely sure that the same
problems didn't develop in the ETEC line as happened in the FICHT
line.

True story. One of the guys at my old marina had two '99 200 FICHTS
on his 32 Hydra-Sport and when the recall was announced, panicked and
removed them replacing them with Merc 200 Optimax's.

Both engines failed within 15 hours of new - powerhead failures. And
he had over 700 hours on his FICHTS with no problems other than
routine maintenance.

Perception is hard to battle. Folks have bought into the whole four
stroke hype for two reasons - it's not a "mysterious" engine with
cutting edge technology (it's like having your car engine on the back
of your boat) and Yamaha dumped their product at low profit margins to
gain market share through what should be viewed as restraint of trade
policies with exclusive deals with manufacturers.

Four strokes have some advantages over two strokes - can't debate that
point. But pound-for-pound, dollar-for-dollar, ETEC two stroke
technology is clearly superior in all areas of performance and
eventually, they will prevail.

WE WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!

Er...

Um...

Never mind. :)