Posts: 3507
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Hiya,
In the years listed, any of the 2 stroke carb motors from OMC, Yamaha, and Mercury are rock solid power plants. OMC in the late 80's had issues with the VRO systems, but that was taken care of by the mid 90's, with the occasional failure here and there (as would be expected in any line/make of motors). All had great power and reliability.
In the 4 stroke models, yamaha, honda, suzuki and Merc had solid power plants, although the Ficht technology that was coming in for OMC (evinrude engines mainly) had some quirks to work out, and thus might best be avoided. I have heard of a few carbed 4 stroke models from merc that had some issues with gaskets being sucked in on the carb, but I would assume they have gotten that worked out.
As earlier stated, the merc Opti's had some issues, but if I recall, many of those issues were with the larger powerplants, although I could very easily be mistaken.
Are you looking more at 4 stroke or 2 stroke?
Steve |
