Re: New Q7
If I remember what I read correctly, the affected part was used from mid 2009 to late 2010, so if nay dealers are still selling boats with those engines, it's either verl old stock, or Mercury warehoused a lot of those engines during that timeframe. My dealer actually told me that there was a recall on the part before I bought the boat. He said that I would get a recall letter and when I did, to bring the boat back and they would change the part, so it's either a matter of Mercury not letting dealers change the part before the sale, or the dealer waiting because an after-sale replacement netted them more money. I heard of a couple of other folks being told something similar from other dealers, so it wasn't just my dealer doing something strange on their own. My engine had the correct metal cooler already installed when I bought it, but then my engine serial number was at the end of the affected range, so they must have already realized that the plastic part was bad at that point and started manufacturing with the metal cooler again. Once I received the recall, I was dreading having my new boat in the show for who knows how long, so I researched what the good and bad parts looked like and checked to make sure that my boat was good. once I knew that I had the good part, I just ignored the recall notice and let them handle giving it the all-clear at the 20 hour service point.
I did see a new deck boat (I don't remember the brand) fill its' engine compartment with water at a launch one day and although I didn't check, I told the guy about the possibility of the broken cooler. He had a Merc 5.0, and said that he would have the dealer check for that. I would bet that's what it was. He launched without any problem, cranked and idled, and that's when the water came in. His bilge couldn't keep up. They still had the trailer in the water and immediately drove it back on and shut down. They expected to find a hole in the hull, but never found any damage, so I bet that the engine was pumping the water in through that broken cooler.
