Poor design, planned obsolesence

[DonV]

To those of you who have a 2stroke Mercury with an engine mounted oil tank and may be having oil alarm issues or even more important if it does happen to you, I might be able to help you diagnose the problem. Let me go over what happened to me last weekend.

My oil alarm went off (four beeps every two minutes), I tried to go out fishing because I knew the tank was full and the oil pumping from the big tank to the engine tank was working properly, however sooner or later the engine's computer will shut you down and put your engine in "safe mode"....it's a long way back to shore from 12 miles out at 1500 rpm.

When I got back to the dock I checked the oil and it was full and I was able to bypass the alarm to isolate the problem to the sending unit/float in the tank. Since the alarm was working the sending unit (switch assembly p/n 856156A2) was eliminated as the problem, the problem is the float system in the tank that uses a magnetic washer to activate the sensor.

First picture is what your float looks like when the tank is low or out of oil ( I just had to cut the damn tank apart) the float and magnetic washer are at the bottom of the shaft.


The second picture is when the float is at the top and the sensor sees the tank is full


And the third is what the problem is, the black magnetic washer has separated from the float and stays at the bottom of the shaft sending a false "out of oil" signal. The washer is actually glued to the BOTTOM of the float.....what??? How dumb is that, why not on top of the float????


Anyway maybe this will help someone.....oh yeah, a new tank is a smooth $75.