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Old 06-22-2014, 01:14 PM
Bushwacker Bushwacker is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: N. Palm Beach, Fl.
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Originally Posted by Blackfin26 View Post
Bushwacker thanks for the tech breakdown in readable terms. What's your guestimate on the reliability of this design? . . .
Based on history to date of the 1st generation E-TEC and over 8 years & 500+ hours of experience with one I bought in 2006, I would expect reliability to be excellent. They're still a basically simple motor with relatively few moving parts and no air pump or complex valve train. And 5 years between scheduled maintenance will provide less opportunity for "creative" maintenance by marginal dealers! I've followed the E-TEC Owners Forum for several years (where, unlike THT, you get the REAL story because no one is taken seriously unless they post Model and S/N of their motor!), and it appears that most of the relatively few problems they've had are due to improper rigging by incompetent dealers. All the modern low emission motors run fairly lean, so fuel starvation issues that lean out a cylinder can quickly fail a piston on any of the new motors, especially with the extra oxygen in E-10 gas. The new system that monitors fuel level in the Vapor Separator Tank should catch most of those problems. And unlike some of the new 4-stroke "throw away" motors that eliminated steel cylinder liners in a desperate attempt to save weight, I believe they still have steel sleeves that allow boring/honing and relatively cheap repair. The more streamlined Lightning gearcases used on the 20" HO Bass boat motors apparently had marginal durability and were discontinued/replaced by the beefier Magnum gearcases used on 25" motors. That fixed durability problem but cost some WOT speed, so the new gearcase should fix that issue.

The one complaint I have about mine is that none of the available hydraulic steering systems provide enough travel to turn the motor all the way to it's stops, and the new integral steering system will fix that.

However, as a mechanical engineer with 35 years in the aerospace industry that's seen a lot of production and "creative maintenance" problems, I'd still give 'em a year or so to get all the "Class I" changes incorporated! (Class I changes impact safety of flight and/or major durability issues!) No matter how good the engineers, production and quality control folks are, they're still human, so I wouldn't expect any all-new product to be perfect right out of the gate!
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