Re: Mercury 125 or NOT?
Jody,<br /><br />I guess I am semi-biased as I work for a dealer that sells Mercury. However, I am not a slaesman, and we also cary Yamaha and OMC. I mostly work in the service department, so I get to see the results of all the salesmen B.S.<br /><br />With that in mind,I personally don't see the love and effection for all the OMC posts on this board. With my exoerience, and first hand knowledge, if it came to my money from a service perspective, I would choose a Yamaha or Mercury. The big disadvantage of the Yamaha is the price. Those import tariffs are killer. Dollar for Dollar, Yamaha parts seem to run about 30% higher than Mercury.<br /><br />My personal experience with Evinrude has been mostly with the Fichts - I personally wouldn't take one even if given to me. Granted the sales ratio of OMC's to Mercury's is staggering (in Mercury's favor), and many of the older OMC's seem to be a little more serviceable by the average "Joe". However with Bombardier taking over the wheel, it may be a new ball of wax, it is a littel early to tell yet. I just hope they don't let the same clowns that run the PWC division run the outboard division. Yet if it is anything like the FishHawk group, they will be a little shaky out of the gate, but come on strong once they get the bugs worked out.<br /><br />However, from what I have seen, with proper maintenance (and I am not implying extra care, or special maintenance) Mercury is the hands down winner.<br /><br />One last note. I am not sure which year or genre you are looking at (EFI, DI, Carb) and there are always the "rotten apple" year/HP combos that Mercury lets through, but if I was to recommend a motor, Mercury would be my recomendation.
