Real world #'s on a 20' CC with a 140 4S Suzuki?

[Bushwacker]

Don, Richard, Frank and Urban – appreciate the kind words! And Frank, yes I actually thought about the repower & bracket for about 4 YEARS before I actually pulled the trigger, and I also spent several months comparing the various motors in great detail and putting together the spreadsheet. Sorry to hear about your motor problems, but sure appreciate your posting them. It's inspired me to start checking ethanol content! So far I haven't found anything over 10%, and what's in the boat now is about 5-6%.

KenB - you do have some good questions/comments which I’ll try to address . . .

2. BRP is of course a Canadian owned and managed company, but all of the E-TEC design, development and production work is done in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, which was still in the USA the last time I checked!

3. Oil changes? You’re right that oil changes are pretty simple compared to some of the high tech stuff on the new motors, although you can download the diagnostic software for free from BRP, and if you have a laptop with a serial port, you can buy or easily make a cable which plugs into the motor’s diagnostic port. It won’t let you do all the stuff a dealer can do, like change the oil ratio from TCW-3 to full synthetic, but it WILL give you the entire history of the motor, including time @ rpm in 500 rpm increments, max temperature of both heads and the ECM, along with any fault codes EVER displayed and engine hours at which they occurred. (Good to know if you’re considering a used one.) It WILL let you do some useful “cylinder drop” diagnostic tests, where you can sequentially disable the ignition or fuel injector on each cylinder to determine which cylinder is causing a misfire, etc.

You bet I’ve always changed my own oil in all my vehicles, mainly because I like to fill the new filter with oil before installing, which most places don’t do! They say running an engine dry for a few seconds doesn’t hurt anything, but I figure it sure as hell doesn’t HELP! In fact I’m planning to plumb a pressurized remote oil reservoir with a solenoid valve into the oil system on my old “Cuda when I finish restoring it. When I go to start that blueprinted & balanced engine after it’s been sitting for a month or so, a couple of quarts of oil will be forced thru it before I hit the starter!

“. . . E-TEC failure rate is the same as the Ficht.“ If that were true, the dealers who have to face the irate customers would have abandoned BRP en mass, and they would have gone out of business years ago. I’m frankly amazed that sales have recovered as well as they have after the Ficht fiasco. I think sandbagging on the power ratings is a smart approach, because once folks discover how strong they run, the resulting “word of mouth” will get more folks to looking at them than any marketing hype ever will. As for durability, only time will tell, but the service manager at my dealer says he’s had fewer problems on them than either the Honda’s or Yamahas, which seem to have good reputations themselves.

In my research, I didn’t waste time talking to sales/marketing types that can’t answer even simple technical questions! I agree that the marketing hype has been incredible. The very fact that there HAVEN’T been any big libel suits from the competition tells me that there was NOTHING in any of those comparison tests that a hungry lawyer (which the USA has plenty of!) could latch on to for a lawsuit. I spoke at length with 2 BRP engineers. The first guy said they had been watching the Ficht motors from the beginning, and based on their experience with the 2-stroke Sea/Ski-Doos, they felt that they understood what the problems were and how to fix them. It was obvious that OMC was in financial trouble, so they simply waited for the bankruptcy to buy them for pennies on the dollar. The Chief Engineer at the Stuart test center, who I had worked with in a previous job for many years and knew I could trust to give me the straight story, was there before and after the buyout. He said many of the Ficht problems were directly related to OMC buying off a lot of deviated parts, maybe because of financial pressure. He said that BRP management was a substantial, order of magnitude improvement; they really cleaned house, got rid of all the bad parts and even tightened up tolerances in some cases. He said the quality on anything built by BRP was dramatically improved over the OMC stuff and that they were truly excellent motors. As Chief Engineer, he had great visibility into the whole operation, so it was his confidence in the product that convinced me, back in March 2006, that the benefits of the then-new technology were sufficient to justify the risk to give it a try. So far it’s proved me right. However like most engineers, I’ve learned more about Murphy’s Law than I ever wanted to know. Murphy would say that as soon as I brag about the motor, it’ll blow up the next day!

4. Why do they cost so much with so many fewer parts? I honestly have no idea, except that since they are generally the lightest engines in class and nearly as quiet as the 4-strokes, they’re probably charging whatever the market will bear. Price is not always directly related to manufacturing cost if you have a very competitive product that’s in high demand. If they really were having lots of problems, sales would drop and they’d be forced to drop the price. So prices aren’t dropping? Draw your own conclusions!

On the E-TEC 150 HO – it’s only made in the 20” shaft version and has slightly less gear reduction, so it’s apparently aimed at the bass boat market. The standard version is what you want for our type of boat. If 165 hp at the prop isn't enough, the 175 and 200 are the same powerhead and weight, although the torque/rpm curves may be optimized toward the higher rpm range for the higher ratings. You also cannot change the gas/oil ratio on HO models from the factory TCW-3 setting to the reduced oil usage setting for the XD-100 full synthetic oil, so they’ll use a bit more oil than a standard “leaned out” motor.

Sorry for the long post but this site is notorious for good intelligent discussions of almost any issue. These issues are no different! Denny