Re: IO v OB my I/O is Dead... opinons Please
Sounds like you've got a lot of good feedback so mine will just be futher confirmation. Our family started with outboards in the sixties and we owned Scott, Evinrude, Johnson into the seventies. The eighties became for us the Age of Mercury in a relatively serious way with two 7.5s (one a long shaft electric pushing dad's sailboat, and the other a shortshaft that I still have on a 14 foot aluminum), a 40 Merc 2 stroke on a 15 foot runabout, then a repower to a 70 Merc 2 stroke.
This was in the time of the smoky blue haze following you everywhere you go, mixing gas and oil or buying outrageously priced (oh, for those outrageous prices now!) premix at the marinas. Our attitude wasn't helped by the fact that the 70 overheated and failed in the first season due to a faulty impeller installation at the factory and never really ran well after the rebuild.
So in the mid-nineties we decided to try I/Os and ran a SeaRay 170 with the little 3 litre Merc for ten years. I loved that boat and logged some serious hours, and at first the "out of site, out of mind" motor was a nice novelty. With the sunpad there was a whole new area of the boat to use. And no endless flipping the ski rope around the outboard. And with that little Mercruiser on a smallish boat fuel economy also picked up considerably.
However...as others have stated, when you do your own maintenance, it starts to get old fast contorting yourself around the motor block, outside in early November freezing drizzle to find those manifold drains. Or sucking oil out of dipstick tubes, or trying to reach hydraulics crammed way in the back, or worrying about outdrive alignment, torquing gimbal bearings, and on and on. And frankly knowing that there was only a thin rubber driveshaft bellows (under constant assault from the elements) between me and the bottom of the lake always gave me the creeps.
Fast forward to the age of the clean-running 4 stroke outboards and we decided to make the switch again last year. It's only been half a season, but I am really enjoying having everything totally accessible in one neat power package hanging off the back. That motor-mounted tilt switch is heaven too (although, granted I have seen some I/Os retrofitted with them). And if I have to repower in 500 hours or do some serious recon work, there is eactly one wiring harness, three bolts, and a fuel line between me and the workbench. Or, thinking about it another way, it's far, far easier taking an outboard with you to your next boat, should that come to pass.
Yes, the four strokes come with their own hassles such as timing belts and this mysterious "making oil" thing, but frankly getting at the belt on that motor is far easier than the one in my car and so far, I've not seen anything amiss at the dipstick.
And, the damn thing is just so fine lookin' sometimes I let others drive so I can just sit, facing backwards watching it work. *cue wife's rolling eyes and head shaking*
I know many of my richer friends who just toss the keys and a thousand bucks at the marina every fall and thus have so maintenance issues themselves wouldn't necessarily agree with my assessment, but then maybe I wouldn't either under those circumstances.
But for the way we approach boating I'm gonna say -- come on in, the water's fine!
