New (to me) motor

[MattInOz]

Hey guys.

One take away from my recent trip to Turkey Beach was that, with the addition of a second battery & anchor winch and with three big boofy blokes on board, my little 40HP 2 stroke struggled to get up on the plane... it managed it but took a while longer than I like to get there.

The hull's a 4.3m aluminium runabout rated for 40-60HP, and currently has a 1999 Mercury 40HP, 2 stroke, 3 cylinder ELPTO motor serial no 0G772228. I'm going out tomorrow to look at and hopefully buy a used motor, a 2001 Mercury 60HP, 2 stroke, 3 cylinder ELPTO serial no 0T328216. As far as I can tell these are basically identical engines even sharing the same block, just with different capacities.

So my question to any Mercury experts out there... what's the odds that I can do the swap without changing out the forward controls and gauges? Reckon they'd be compatible? I'll swap them if I have to but getting all those cables and wires out and new ones in would be a pain to be avoided if possible. Just getting the dual battery switch panel off to get at the battery leads will be a big enough pain.

Matt

[MattInOz]

Well, answered my own question... according to Ipswich Marine they use the same controller so all good, just swap the engine over.

Bought a new compression gauge today, going out to look at the 60 tomorrow. Tested the gauge on my 40HP and got 107, 107, 105 psi which is a bit lower than I'd expected but ok for a 26 year old engine. It could be the gauge but it's all I've got and the numbers seem close to right so if the gauge is out it shouldn't be by too much. At least I'll be able to tell if there's a significant difference between the cylinders on the 60 or not, and I'll get Ippy Marine to put their gauge on it when they swap it over so I can compare to my readings.

[ellicat]

Good news, Matt.

Can't wait to hear how big the difference the 60 makes.

[MattInOz]

The 60 metered out to exactly the same figures as the 40 which is encouraging. The gearbox oil was green, not white, and it started and ran better than the 40 does. The steering's really light and free too, unlike the 40 which I've struggled to free to to a usable point. The vendor even gave me his home made engine stand which'll make it easier to sell the 40. Took boat and engine in today, should be ready tomorrow AM but I'm baby sitting a sick toddler tomorrow so first chance to put it in the river and give it a blast will be thuraday... will let you know. It's propped to suit a 5.1m fibreglass boat and is going on a 4.3m ally boat so chances are will have to change prop to get the best out of it.

[MattInOz]

Spent a couple of hours yesterday greasing and adjusting stuff on the boat and ran ithe donk up in the driveway and it ran nicely. Today finally got the boat into the water. Wow what a difference... it was fairly sedate before, it worked well enough and had sufficient power if you had one or two people on board but that was all. Now (albeit with just me on board) it practically jumps out of the water when you goose it, and the top speed's increased from about 22kn to 30kn at 5300RPM once it's all trimmed out (on a glassy Brisbane River). Current prop's a 10 3/8" x 13"... I could go up to a 14" pitch but it's only going to make a few knots difference, and do I really need every last erg of speed in what's mostly a fishing boat? I'd rather keep the power to get up on plane, and low end performance for trolling than chasing that last five knots or so, and 30kn is plenty for any family boating I'm likely to do... taking the wife & daughter out to Tippler's or around Bribie, etc. I had to knock it down to 6kn for a km or so to go under the bridge at Jindalee due to the bridge works and it chugged along at trolling speed nicely, no choking up etc. Steering's REALLY free now too... so much so that when it's idling with the typical 2 stroke "miss" it now moves the steering wheel around. I was planning on putting a steering knob on the wheel for when I'm docking, but now I can just "palm" the wheel and spin it around like I would a car.

There does seem to be a bit of an issue with the tilt/trim... if I trim it all the way up it makes a "crack" noise near the end of travel sometimes, and when I trim it down it gets past the "tilt" section and into the "trim" part of travel and it sort of hesitates for a second and the motor makes that "I'm not under load" noise then it sort of catches up with a "clunk" and drops the rest of the way normally. The hydralic ram seems to be undamaged so maybe an issue in the tilt tube? Also the gear change is quite stiff both into and out of gear, forward and backward. Brad at Ipswich Marine mentioned it and I'm gonna see if it frees itself up with use before I go looking any deeper. I'm using the original forward controls & cables that were in the boat rather than the ones that came with the engine and they worked just fine on the 40, although the throttle seems to be more free now than it was before. One other odd thing I noticed when flushing it today is that it has water coming out of a hole in the forward face of the leg, just above the cavitation plate. I'm pretty sure the 40 didn't do it but seems to be operating fine so I assume that's a thing with the 60. It was also pulling left once it got some speed on it... the original trim tab/anode thing was broken when I got it and they put a new one on for me when they fitted the engine, so I just adjusted that left a fraction once I got home. It was pointing slightly right originally and is now dead on centered, so next time I'm out I'll bring a 5/8" socket with me and see if it's right or not now.

Oh I didn't bring a rod with me but it might be worthwhile dropping a line in off the pontoon at the Jindalee boat ramp... my sonar was going nuts beeping at me all around there.

Oh and if anyone's interested... I've got a well behaved 40HP 2 stroke I'm looking to sell.

[MattInOz]

Well, barring unforseen circumstances it looks like I've just sold my 40HP... a guy just gave me a $1000 deposit on it and will be back with another $1500 in a week, so I made $500 on the deal which pays for the installation and the new external fuel tank I had to buy to show it running on the stand (which will now go into the boat as an emergency fuel source). Hoorah for free upgrades!

It's not quite free, turns out I need to replace a seal which is making the gear shift stiff in and out of gear but that's not urgent.