Another 2001 Optimax problem. Grrr

[Gillagorilla]

Well the boat was at the shop this week for the port engine starting then stalling out even if you tried to rev it up in neutral. Tech said last time it was picked up two weeks ago for another issue that he wanted to put some type of rods in each engine for them not idling down from 1000rpms at times. He put them in today and I guess had the engine running then all of the sudden he had the #5 piston coming out of the block.

Do you all have any idea what would cause this? This boat was apparently not run for about 1 1/2 years before it was bought this spring. They are 225 Optis on the back with just under 500 hours on each engine.

Thanks for any light that can be shed on this for me. He told my dad to come down to the shop this morning so I am trying to go down there also to hear what happened.
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[Martino110]

Sorry, I don't speak Mercury. I would try Marinengine.com and go the the Merc site. http://marineengine.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi. Good luck!

[Gillagorilla]

Well after making the trip down to the shop this morning it sounds like there is three options. Trade the boat as is and hope that there is not to much of a hit to take. Have two reman power heads installed for each motor or go with the mercury remanufactured outboards that are 2003 or newer.

[Snapper Head]

'rilla,

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's.


Yes, I am a smartass. In this case I speak from way too much experience with 2001 3 liter optimax engines.

Get rid of those 2001 opti's. Sir.


Big Al
scarred from my 2001 optinightmare

[jeffro22]

how much are they charging for the new powerhead?

[Gillagorilla]

Around $6500 to $7000 for a reman power head and one injector. It looks like we can get the Mercury reman outboard assembly with the 12 month warranty for around $8500 to $9000 so that sounds like it is the best way, just replace both of them with 2003 or newer Optimax's and be done with it. Plus a grand to have each outboard rigged up and another grand to replace the old crappy throttle cables and control box. Sounds like rite around $20K for everything rite now. Ouch!!!

[Wolakrab]

Go shopping for some used engines....you can probably find something that you can get into for much, much less than 20K rigged. Sorry for your Merc troubles...I had 4 Opti's that ran great--'01's & '02's. FWIW, they did have their problems, but once Merc owned up and put out the updates, they became good engines.