Flot

It has what now? I've never heard of any of the Suzukis having dual charging EXCEPT for the DF300 (and its sibling 250SS)... ? Details / Link ? Edit: Hmm, found this... Interesting. Looks like this exists for the DF150, 175, 250SS, and 300 - but not for the DF200, 225 or 250. (older engine designs) http://www.suzukimarine.com/sr_08/_m/acces.../controlbox.pdf Battery Isolator Lead Set 33830-96J00 Used for charging auxillary battery DF150/175

It amazes me that nobody has been able to pull this off yet on a large scale - either the modular houses that show up on trucks and are placed on site, or the "building block" units that are large pre-assembled panels. Either one *could* be far superior to a house built on site. The ability to assemble complex systems in a controled environment just has so many advantages. I see no reason why you couldn't assemble a custom house "shell" in just a day or two. I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before someone gets it right and revolutionizes housing. Actually I'm surprised it didn't happen over the last few years. As a point of reference - could you imagine buying a car, built by a bunch of local workers, assembled from stuff from the auto parts store down the street, put together out in a parking lot?

I'm not positive, but I agree with you, I'm pretty sure that is one of the yamamercs. http://img.alibaba.com/photo/104851549/200...board_motor.jpg http://www.blystone.com/Mercury%20Pages/Me...0FourStroke.jpg Edit: Yep, see links above.

Would have been so much funnier if he had been like "I'm fine... I'm fine..." then turned around and had a matching hole on his back.

If you took out blue-green oil it was probably merc synthetic lower unit fluid. Many people swear by this stuff (in any brand LU) - and you may have put in non-synthetic in its place. Not the end of the world, just something to think about. The synthetic is only a couple bucks more and allegedly it does a better job in case you get water intrusion etc.

Osprey I re-read this and had to elaborate. Anyone who tries to use these like normal tabs and is unhappy with their operation needs to go back and RTFM. For everyone's education, here is the control panel: You have 4 buttons, with amber LEDs along the sides that indicate what position your tabs are at. In the normal (retracted) case, two green leds show in the upper corners. As you want to adjust trim, you simply press one of the buttons once for each increment of 1/8 tab you want to deploy. So 3 presses on the top button (bow down) = both tabs are deployed to the #3 position. Ditto on the bottom. If you have a side-to-side leveling issue, the two marked buttons to the left and right indicate "lower port side" "lower starboard side" - all of the buttons correspond to exactly what you intend to do and the tab controller will compensate automatically and semi-intelligently, again always giving you a readout of what position the tabs are in. When I say semi-intelligently, I believe it attempts to keep your current bow attitude along with your port/starboard trim adjustments. So if I am at 50% trim and I indicate I want to raise the port side a bit, first press it will deploy the port side tab 1 notch. If I recall correctly, second press it will actually lower the starboard side 1 notch instead, rather than raising the port side twice and throwing your bow attitude even further out of whack. If you were to attempt to use them like hydraulic tabs - it would be like holding down the 5 button on your cell phone because you wanted to dial 555. It just wouldn't work properly. I much prefer this system to traditional hydraulic tabs where I was always wondering how far down they were, how much tab was left, if they were travelling at the same speed etc.

I have some of those QLs that Osprey installed ;-) and I'm very happy with them. In fact - if the boat hadn't had them there's a good chance I would have bought a different boat! As a diver I just don't need pieces of steel sticking out at my shins while boarding in 2-4' seas. So for me it was either a boat with a platform on the back, recessed tabs, or the QLs. Yes I know they really aren't THAT big of a hazard but it's one more thing to deal with and I'd rather not. The QLs are more responsive than a traditional tab - but they have a digital control unit. It really couldn't be any simpler. You press (tap) the button and it moves down in 1/8 increments that are indicated with LEDs. No more of that holding both switches down for 2 seconds, waiting 5 seconds to see what happened nonsense. I know in certain types of conditions I want 20% tab and I just tap twice and they lock into place almost instantly. I do get a little nervous every time someone from PL asks me how they are doing, lol, but I will definitely put another set on if/when these fail.

Although it's certainly possible to have a perfect trailer setup, seems to me like most boats still bounce around pretty well on the trailer. I also learned the hard way that overtightening the rear strap isn't always good - at least not on an aluminum trailer. The aluminum actually flexes quite a bit during normal driving. I once strapped the boat down so well that it caused the trailer to flex (and apparently the wheels to go out of alignment) every time I went over a bump. Damndest thing - I couldn't figure out why the setup was towing so bad. After a couple of miles I pulled over, loosened the strap to "snug" as opposed to "superhumanly tight" and everything was golden. To the guy whose transom broke off - huh - never heard of that before but now I have!

I would almost buy the argument that ok, these products don't save your transom.. they save your trim rams. However, now we (finally) have outboards with 5 and 6 year warranties, and again, I've never heard of a trim failing from excessive force - rather they develop leaks over time, the motors burn out, or they corrode away. If the manufacturers believe that your trim assembly will last for 6 years, and they don't stipulate anything unusual during towing....

Beau, that was my point. The truck has gone 300 miles in 3 years with no fuel treatement that I recall. If that doesn't dispute the "gas going bad" theory I don't know what does, not to mention the fact that I did a 50/50 non-eth/ethanol mix in the middle there. Still running fine.

Agreed. Dusky has been pretty good for me. Might also try outboard specialities in pompano, they are a little north for me but I see them at all the local shows and they seem like good guys.

I have to point this out. That means that instead of having a 500 lb outboard bouncing around on the transom, you now have a 4000 lb boat bouncing around on the outboard. So every time the boat moves up and down on the trailer, you are transferring that force to the outboard?? I just don't buy it, I think these products are nonsense. Has anyone actually seen a transom fail that WASN'T due to good old fashioned rot?

Beau, I copied this snippet from the other thread. I occasionally use a stabilizer. When I do, I use it because I feel like "maybe I should have" like in my generator, lawnmower, etc. Then I feel bad and throw some in the boat just because it makes me feel better. I boat almost year round so that's not such a big deal. I have a used truck that I bought around Nov 2006. I have put around 250-350 miles on it since I bought it. I remember I filled it up on the drive home. Then I filled it up one more time around late 2007, both times non-ethanol. Then, summer 08 I filled it up with $4.25 ethanol-improved fuel. I start it up once a month or so when I can and drive it around the block for 10-15 mins. I do perform other maintenance on it, but there's not much I can do with the fuel in between uses. Despite the fact that the truck is hardly used, and the fact that I mixed half a tank of ethanol fuel with non-ethanol fuel, it continues to start and run just fine, or at least I should say just as well as it did the day I bought it. I may have put some techron or something like that in the very first tank (during my "fix it up" phase) but after that, nothing that I recall.

I have two problems with additives like that: - Nobody really knows if they actually do anything. Sure, you may add them all the time and have never had an engine failure... but I've owned a dozen engines and never had an engine failure either. - Cost. Techron will set you back about $10 a bottle and looks like the BG product is more than that. Now let's say we follow your advice of adding techron every time you fuel up, and that a $10 bottle treats 20 gal of gas. Now we're at $0.50 per gallon. In Kerno's example, his motors went 2700 hours - let's be conservative and say they are averaging 7 gal/hour of fuel consumption. That's 19,000 gallons of fuel or $9500 of additives. That's 2/3rds the cost of a new motor!!

Have you looked outside???

Kerno - one thing you didn't mention is what your friend was doing for engines prior to the hondas and e-tecs? If he goes through that many engines - it seems like it would be worthwhile for him to spend one or two seasons running engines from each of the engine manufacturers. He would actually have some good real world data about relative reliability, and he could then standardize on whoever gives him the best overall operating cost. Maybe that's where he was going with the hondas and etecs... I'd be curious to see how he'd do with suzuki/yamaha as well. Interesting about the failures - but 2700 hours is nothing to sneeze at.. that's a solid year running 8 hours a day...

I wouldn't bring the camera unless you like taking photos of junk. It's definitely worth going to if you have a 5+ year old boat, you never know what you'll stumble across that you need, or didn't even realize you needed. If you are looking for newer gear, lines, fishing equipment, etc, sometimes you get lucky sometimes not so much, but it's more fun than buying on ebay at least. When I was there last year I was looking at some engine cowls, bought dock lines, misc small items, some stainless parts I needed... a buddy got a good deal on a kite setup and some other assorted items.

Curious to hear how the DMFM looks this year... anybody been already? Going to try to head down late this afternoon or early tomorrow am...

In my experience, when a motor is tilted all the way up, it is surprisingly well balanced. I've helped replace a couple of trim pumps, and even on a ~400 lb motor, you can hold the engine in the up position without too much effort. There is just not that much stress on the hydraulics. If you had a really unusual situation - like trailering over a long bumpy dirt road, etc - I am sure they would help. But I can't imagine it being a real problem for most people in normal paved road conditions.

Awesome! I guess the noncompete was up?? On the one hand I think this is great and hope we can get a better sense of community going on here. On the other, the more forums you get specializing in the same thing, the more fragmented the content (and useful info) gets. Hoping for the best on this new venture though!