NOHOME said:
In reply to oldrotarydriver :
Always wondered what a Manatee Margarita would taste like!
Honestly, based on my experience with outboards the chances of all of those engines working at the same time for the entire day is not very high. We used to burn up over a million dollars per year of Evinrude engines when I was working in the oilfields. Yamaha did a bit better, but they were still pretty much a consumable.
Interesting, my OMC is 60 years old. My Yamaha is 22 years old. My brothers Honda is 18 years old. Y'all must have been abusing the equipment rather severely because outboards are usually pretty durable.
mtn
MegaDork
3/13/18 12:08 p.m.
Agreed with Toyman. Our '82 Merc, which was abused to no end, always worked. Might have been a pain to get started, might have required a lower unit oil change every month, but it always worked.
NOHOME
UltimaDork
3/13/18 12:35 p.m.
Need to mention that the oilfield was in the swamps of Nigeria. We asked Evinrude to flyover a tech or two to give us some insight as to what the issues were. The answer was "NOPE We don't send people to Nigeria"
That is when we switched to Yamaha for boats that had to go fast, and Yanmar diesel outboards for the rest of the work boats that hauled crews to the field. The diesels worked pretty good.
The P class offshore boat that we raced out of the shop also had a lot of engine failures. Those were Mercs with early EFI computers that had like a 100% failure rate until they got it sorted out.
bluej
UltraDork
3/13/18 12:35 p.m.
Saltwater life is very different than freshwater life at any level of use.
oldrotarydriver said:
how to suck a unvented fuel tank into an event horizon ... ?
The visual image my mind created from that statement was awesome, thank you for that.
NOHOME said:
Need to mention that the oilfield was in the swamps of Nigeria. We asked Evinrude to flyover a tech or two to give us some insight as to what the issues were. The answer was "NOPE We don't send people to Nigeria"
Even when you don't start the emails with "My name is Miriam Achaba, and I'm managing an oil field in Nigeria..."? 
bluej said:
Saltwater life is very different than freshwater life at any level of use.
Mine have been pretty much exclusively used in saltwater. They get run hard, but never get put up saltwater wet.
I could definitely see where swamps and blown up outboards would go hand in hand. That's not going to be a good environment for anything. Nohome should have skipped the Yamaha and went straight to airboat.
mad_machine said:
isn't the LS an aluminum engine? I wonder how it works with the raw water cooling in saltwater?
All outboards produced since forever are aluminum. Starting in the 80s, some manufacturers plated water jackets with bronze to help. They do get eaten up faster, but its mostly a non-issue
