Re: john/rude the only way to go
...And I think Nicco nailed the whole good motor bad motor thing down anyway.
There are tons of stupid stories down here, let me share some:
* Offshore Fishermen say the best OBs are Mariner/Mercury; why? because the sales manager is always ready to send mechanics to pick them up and fix their problem. Ah, but they say Yamaha and Evinrudes are the devil in blue dress; why? because their dealership sucks, and the service is not good. So, do they really care about the quality of the OB?...Nah, they only care about the service!
* I have a friend that has a 21' Robalo CC fitted with a Mercury Optimax. He fried the engine when it had only like 120 hours on it. He goes "this Mercury sucks, it fried on me!"...why did it fry? He did not service it at all, not even once!! I really didn't care about the excuse he made up, but he had to buy a new one. Go figure.
* Johnson/Evinrude had the biggest and best dealership in our country, but 10 years ago, they went bankrupt (not chapter 11) and closed their 3 national agencies. Now nobody wants an E-Tec, and God forbid a Johnson
My late inlaw had 3 boats fitted with Johnnyrudes; my 10' runabout aswell. He told me not to worry, he had all the service manuals for his OBs, and taught me how to do basic maintenance. The last 10 years we serviced the motors by ourselves, and they kept running great (until he died, and we lost all his boats
)
Point is, everybody here stood away from Johnnyrudes, saying they were no good, and the basic solution was to
KEEP THEM SERVICED! (eventhough we had to import the replacement parts from Guatemala)
Now I have a Yamaha 4 stroke. I've never serviced one of these. So last week, I had it serviced for the first time (10 hours breaking in service). I let the Yamaha guys do the oil and filter change, and the lower unit oil change. I was there, watched and learned. I'm not paying for this again! I also asked the mechanic to teach me how to change the timing belt, but he just gave me pointers. I'm planning to get a service manual for my OB, but they aren't out just yet (it was manufactured in sept 2008).
I really beleive there is no "best" brand out there. All OB manufacturing plants are state of the art these days.
I agree with TD about some being easier to mantain than others; as well as parts availability, that helps a lot.
To OP, once again, if you keep towing boats with your Johnnyrude, is because you service it and keep it running good
Cheers!
Sorry for the long post
