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I have long been a vehement supporter of Yamaha engines. When I was a little kid I used to always tell my dad and uncle which were both die hard OMC fans one day I would own a bad and beautiful flats boat with a shiny silver Yamaha strapped to the back of it. Just like the guys we would always see launching their boats next to us at the Placida ramp. As a teenager they were the coolest, best looking motors on the water and not to mention their history of great reliability. While growing up in Central Florida most kids thought about what would be their dream car, truck, or motorcycle. All I could really ever find myself dreaming about was my dream flats boat with a sweet looking Yamaha motor on the back..
Nearly 15 years passed before I was able to realize my dream. She was a bodacious 1996 201 Pro Guide Back Country with a Dark Blue Yamaha 200 Pro V. The boat was used and had the distinction of being the dinghy on the CEO of Home Depots Sport fisher. The Back Country had every bell and whistle I could have wanted. Even though it was loaded with all of the options I could have asked for, if it didn’t have a beautiful Yamaha 200 Pro V with Low Water pick up like it did but instead had another make of motor. I would have probably passed on it. To this day I have never had a corvette but as far as I am concerned the Back Country with the 200 Yamaha on the back was the corvette of boats on the water. Even now the BC still puts a smile on my face when I see it or think about it.
Eventually my needs changed and I needed a different style of boat to run Charters with, so I decided to go with a 2200V Pathfinder matted with a 150 HPDI. The motor on the Pathfinder performed flawlessly. I never ever had any problems with it. The gas and oil consumption was nil. It seemed as if I was getting five miles to the gallon gas wise and 5 tanks of gas to 1 tank of oil. What a great motor it was. I knew Yamaha was the best motor out and I was fortunate enough to own one.
Not long after getting the Pathfinder I decided to start my own TV Show. Along with the TV show came sponsor contacts and the like. For the first time in my life I was going to be able to buy a brand new boat with anything that I wanted on it and however I wanted it. I had never owned a new boat before so it was extremely exciting for me to be able to set it up exactly how I wanted it. Well, in case you don’t know already. I powered that brand new Shearwater up with the latest and greatest Yamaha on the market. Yamaha had me sold on the new 225 HPDI. I read all of the specs on it concerning the 1000 psi direct injection and the way the big HPDI sips oil. I mean all of the improvements this big menacing 225 HPDI had over my great 150 HPDI. Just the thoughts of it had me drooling at the prospects of great power and terrific economy.
I waited as patiently as could be expected for my new Shearwater with 225 HPDI to arrive at Ft. Myers Marine. Noah the sales manager gave me a call and said it was in, but he said I couldn’t take it home for a couple of days until it went through dealer prep and the Lowrance was installed. I drove right up to the dealership so I could get my first peek at my very first new boat. The dark blue on the cowling of the sharp 225 HPDI was a sight for sore eyes. The new nose cone on the lower unit made the boat look fast just sitting there on the trailer. At that moment I knew it, I was in love. It nearly killed me to wait over the weekend and all the way to next Tuesday to pick the Chew On This Shearwater up. Noah went over the in and outs of the boat and then he went over the motor. He explained how during break in the HPDI computer will double the oil for the first 10 hours and then return to normal after that. He also said after the first 10 hours I would have to bring in the motor to have the plugs changed. He gave fairly detailed info on how to throttle the motor from low rpm to high rpm’s and never run it for long periods of time at the same throttle setting. Then he sent me on my way to enjoy my first brand new boat.
On the second day I put the boat in the water after running it for a little under 3 hours the first day. Before I was able to make it through the first idle zone one of my plugs fouled. The plug would only miss at low rpm’s but at high rpm’s it would run great so I chalked it off to new motor break in and figured the plugs would get replaced at 10 hours. As the second day of break in wore on the motor seemed as if it was fouling another plug. By the time I made it back to the last idle zone the motor had 7 hours on it and burned 2.5 gallons of oil over the past 4 hours. In the last idle zone I had to ad oil and limp back in the rest of the way to the ramp. The motor was jumping and bucking and skipping and missing all the way home. I called Ft. Myers Marine on the way home and they told me to bring it in and they would go ahead and replace the plugs at no charge since they fouled so quickly.
Skip to the fourth day now. The boat now has 12 hours and has burned approximately 8 gallons of oil. The first sign of a plug fouling started that day. Two days later at 20 hours the first plug fouled and the motor started skipping again. At 22 hours at least two plugs had fouled and the motor was hardly making it. The whole boat felt as if it was going to shake apart. I called Ft. Myers Marine again and they said to bring it in, Yamaha has issued a couple of updates for the 225 hpdi.
The next day I took the motor into Chuck at Ft. Myers Marine and he got his workers on it right away. I told check how the Yamaha 225 hpdi had burned on avg. 2.5 to 3 gallons of oil per 57 gallon tank of gas. He put his mechanics right to work on it.They replaced or adjusted some oil rod linkage or something and changed the plugs along with a few other odds and ends. There I was on my way to check my new ride out and biting at the bit to see the improved oil consumption and overall ride. I just new everything would be good to go this time.
Unfortunately for me it wasn’t. At first, things seemed to be clearing up. I had put another 10 hours on the motor and everything seemed to be going well, except for continual high consumption of oil. Sure enough on the way to an early Saturday morning trip the 225 hpdi starts spitting and jumping and missing. By the time I made it through the first Manatee zone the motor felt as if it was only running on three cylinders. When I tried to plane up it took a good two or three minutes to get on step. I picked up my clients at the local ramp begrudgingly and decided to take them to a spot out of the way about 4 miles. The bite was slow there so I decided to go and try a different spot. It wasn’t happening, the boat could not even get on plane. It didn’t have a prayer. We ended up idling the whole 4 miles back to the ramp. I felt so bad about ruining their trip with a fouled up motor. Fortunately they were willing to reschedule for another day.
I stopped at Sanibel Harbor to see if they had any plugs for the Yamaha 225 hpdi and they didn’t. However the mechanic which is a great guy buy the way offered to blow the ones I had out and gave me some carb and choke cleaner to clean them out myself if I had anymore problems with them. When I went to plane up as I was leaving the harbor the motor began to spit and sputter again. I still couldn’t get on plane. I limped around the corner to the boat ramp near the bridged and called my wife and told her of my dilemma. She called Tad’s in Cape Coral and bought 60 dollars worth of spark plugs and brought them 15 miles away to me. As it turned out the new plugs allowed me to get home.
At this point I was no longer a happy patient camper. I called my dealer and was told there was nothing they could really do for me other than give me some more plugs. They didn’t even care about the huge amounts of oil money I had used over the first 40 hours of the engines life. I decided to post my problems here on the forum after all of the problems I had been having to see if there were others like me.. Within 3 days there were over 3000 readers and 100’s of post on the thread. Yamaha got wind of the thread and had there Florida tech call me and help me out. The tech told me there was a new update for the motors but they were having trouble getting them out to all of their dealers. He said for the time being just have your dealer give you a set of new hotter burning plugs to burn off all of the extra oil the engine is consuming. For the next two and half to three weeks I ran the boat burning nearly triple oil. The tech set up an appointment at Ft. Myers Marine with me once the parts arrived. The procedure he was doing was so new that none of the mechanics at Ft. Myers Marine new how to do it. While the tech was changing the ecm, control arms, sparkplugs, sparkplug wires, and who knows what else, the owner Chuck from Ft. Myers Marine came over to me and impolitely said “son my dealership fixes their own sh!t there.” Implying that he was not happy the tech from Yamaha had to come in and fix my motor. I have never went back to Ft. Myers Marine since that day.
When the tech finally finished the work he said I had a new computer, spark plugs which were hotter burning, spark plug wires, and I don’t remember what else. I asked the tech if the high amounts of oil the engine burned would hurt it’s longevity in the future. He replied by saying he has seen engines go 5000 hours after having the update done. I also mentioned to him I had burned about 55 gallons of oil in those first 130 hours of operation. I asked him if Yamaha was going to reimburse me for loses because I couldn’t afford that much oil over that short of a period of time. At that point he gave me the standard 4 gallon case of oil that all clients who get the update get and said he will work on the rest.
For the next month or so the Yamaha 225 hpdi ran fine until it starting cutting out intermittently at idle while fishing. Sometimes it would only cut out once or twice on other occasions it would cut out 10 to 15 times. Tim found out I was having problems again and set up an appointment with me at Tad’s Marine in Cape Coral to get the motor looked at. Tim did all of the computer checks and could not find anything wrong with it, so he said we needed to wet test it. We took it to the Yacht Club and launched the boat. He told me to do whatever it was that was making it stall out. I tried for 30 minutes or so but it never did it. When we got back at the ramp Tim had me keep it in the water on the trailer and throttle the boat in and out of gear while he adjusted the rpm higher on the motor. He adjusted it up to 700 rpm’s and said that is where it should be. We pulled the boat out of the water and Tim told me to pull by his truck because he had some oil for me that he paid for himself. He said Yamaha does not reimburse for oil and since he said he would get it taken care of he paid for it out of his own pocket.
Good News! The 225 HPDI is fixed. Over the next 9 months the motor ran without a hiccup. No stalls, no fouled plugs, no nothing. It was so nice to finally have a motor with no bugs. I mean it was sweet and powerful. I even thought it gained some horse power about 9 months into ownership and it even felt faster. I knew Yamaha would come through for me. They have always built top quality outboard motors and I was sure they had done their homework on this motor before they sent it out to the public. No customer guinea pigs in the Yamaha camp. Yamaha only had a few hiccups that were fixed with a little time and effort. I knew they wouldn’t let me down.
BOY WAS I WRONG ON THIS ONE! Everything was peachy Keene until this month. On Friday, May the 7th while on a trip with LarryMac from the Florida Sportsman Forum and two of his buddies 7 miles offshore the unthinkable happened. My 225 HPDI had a sudden loss of power. When I tried to restart, it just grunted the first couple of times. Eventually I was able to get it to turn over but not fire. We drifted for 45 minutes before I was able to get it to fire up. It sure sounded bad when it did fire up. The whole boat was knocking and shaking all over the place. I had to get us in we were a long ways from home. I had the three guys get to the front of the boat and tried to get on plane. It wasn’t gonna happen. The best she would go is 9.9 mph and 3000 rpm’s. That was one heck of a long ride in. LarryMac and the gang were good sports about the whole thing but it sure was embarrassing having to cancel the trip after 4 hours. To make things even worse I had picked them up at the Waterfront Restaurant which is at St. James City on Pine Island. I called anyone and everyone that I could think of that may be available to drive my clients a short 3 miles from the ramp to the restaurant. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone so they had to ride in my truck for the 30 plus mile trip by car to the restaurant.
I called Tad’s Marine on Saturday the 8th to find out when I could get them to look at my boat because something had went wrong with it. They told me they were short staffed and Tuesday would be the quickest they could get to it. I took the boat in on Tuesday and left it with them. Wednesday I went back to the shop and asked for progress. Paul the shop manager said he had hooked up the computer and everything shows good. He told me he was going to run some more tests on it and to call later. I called a good 3 hours later and he told me he could not find anything wrong with it. He said if nothing shows up I would have to go put it in the water so he could wet test it. At that point I asked “have you even tried to crank it yet?” He told me no. I thought it was kind of obvious that we couldn’t wet test it. The thing wouldn’t even crank.! Nearly two hours later I decided to go back up there. When I finally found Paul he told me it was done. I said “What do you mean by done?” He said it blew up! They did a compression check and the top left cylinder had 0 psi and the one under that had 70. I almost couldn’t believe my ears. You mean to tell me a computer with all of it’s gauges and everything and it could even tell someone that the motor is blown up. What good is that? Paul said they would have to send the downloads into Yamaha and find out what they wanted to do next.
The next time I heard from Paul he said they are going to send a new powerhead. Three days pass along with 2 scheduled fishing charters and no word. The next week I had the Redfish Tour in Titusville so I didn’t call. The next Monday which was 13 days later they were just finishing up. They told me to come back in the afternoon after they had ran it on the hose for another hour checking it on the computer. I came back and asked the mechanic if there was any certain things I needed to do to break in this new powerhead. He said not really except, “make sure you vary your speeds in and out not running at the same rpm’s for a long time.” I hitched the Shearwater and I was off smiling and happy to have my baby back. I go fill her up with gas and take her straight to the boat ramp. I put her in and idle out of the manatee zone, I hoped up on plane varying my speeds in and out while heading to the next manatee zone. About 200 yards away there was a sudden loss of power just like before. Sure enough, I tried to recrank it and it just grunted the first couple of times. The next time I tried the brand new Yamaha 225 hpdi it fired up and started beating and banging and clanging. I couldn’t believe a brand new block blew up in the first 5 minutes of running.
I called Tad’s Marine back up and held the phone to the motor and asked if something sounded wrong with it. Paul said that doesn’t sound good bring it in and we will take a look at it. He knew full well that I was sitting in the middle of the river broke down with a brand new power head. Fortunately I was able to call Smiley one of the assistant wrestling coaches at Cape High for a tow in. I loaded the boat and drove it straight to Tad’s and left it there. When I dropped by the next day Paul said the computer shows up fine and there is nothing wrong with it. Paul said: “Yamaha has asked for us to send the downloads to them so they can look at them.” That was last Tuesday the 25th. I didn’t hear from anyone the whole week. I went in today Tuesday the 1st of June and asked Paul what is the word. He said the Tech has yet to contact him back.
If I wasn’t happy before I am really not happy now. I missed 6 Charters this weekend out of my boat. I placed a call with the Tech when I got home and he told me he is on vacation this week and I will need to call the customer service number to get someone to help me.
continued
Well, here I am writing this long “Yamaha Horror Story” to whom it may concern, my name is Captain Ben Chancey and I am a Professional Fishing Guide and Professional Redfish Tour Angler with a Yamaha 225HPDI. The 225 Yamaha HPDI has blown up twice this month, the second one in only 5 minutes and not one person has even thought about contacting me from Yamaha concerning the misfortunes of their motor and the month it has taken to get it fixed. Fishing is my livelihood and it is the way I support my family. It is the way I pay my mortgage and the way I pay my boat payment. Unfortunately my dream/fantasy of owning a great Yamaha motor has turned into one scary nightmare with no end in site.
Someone else with unrealistic dreams of a trouble free new boat, has already ironed out all the bugs in the boat for you at their expense and stress. Just look at Birdy - he had a full head a hair before he bought his Scout with Yamma outboards - now he's bald as a badger - pulled it all out, he did!
Let me get this right..
1. You guide people professionally
2. You started your own TV show
3. You get sponsored with aboat / motor
4. You werent smart enough to go Merc & 4 stroke?
Whats the TV show called? "Dumbass goes boating?"
Lemm give ya a tip.
When your sponsored...you don't "bite the hand that feeds you!".
Posting up "Yamaha horror story" for your very first post here, is hardly going to get you a pat on the head from the CEO of Yamaha now is it? (Presumably your sponsor?)
Methinks if you know as much about TV shows, charter guiding, fishing and sponsorship as you do about boating - their might be more to this story about the outboard than at first meets the eye.
So just "what is the point" your trying to make here - you got a dud engine for nada?
You poor bastard! The rest of us should be so lucky!
Cheers
"trouty the irrsacible!"
Sponsored by no one,
Proudly associated with:-
cold beer
burnt snaggers
& Ketchup
Sorry to hear the horror story. Will the dealer go to bat for you and insist that the engine be replaced? I have had a problem with a brand new Suzuki 200 4S and on the third time to the shop, after being stuck offshore, I insisted and so did the dealer that engine be replaced. After conversations with Suzuki I am picking the boat up this weekend with the new replacement engine, all warranties in tact, etc. Nothing is perfect but there comes a point when the manuf. has to give it up and step up the plate and replace the engine. Their R&D should be done in the shop, not on the back of your boat robbing you of your livelihood and professional endeavors. I hope things work out for you and there is a quick resolution to the situation.
AS well written.... and as well thought out as this STORY is....
An adage which tends to pop up on things like this is the following...
there are three sides to every story.... HIS... THERS... and the TRUTH.
We probably will never know the HULL TRUTH of this story. Here is what I DO
know.... the few problems I have had Yamaha and my dealer fixed ASAP. and 5 1/2
years later.... and 2000 hours total run time on my engines....and I couldnt be happier.
Another thing to remember here ...without a total rehash... seems like most of the recent
blow ups are after the engine is a year old... and I believe Yamaha and most other engine
builders only warrant their engines for ONE year in commerical/charter use.
Hey Trouty I have never been sponsored by any motor manufacturer. Yamaha is no sponsor of mine and will never be. They were the number 1 choice of mine because of my previous history with them. As for getting a TV show, well it really dosen't work like that. I made the show and edit it. Since you asked for the name it is called "Chew On This." Take it how you will. I bought and paid for the boat just like everyone on here. I could have kept it a secret and just let everything get pushed under the rug but I just couldn't do that now could I. Maybe you like to hush things up but I think it is my duty to let others know of my personal experiences with my 225 hpdi. First post is correct. I have been a member of the FS site for a very long time however. I am one of the first 1000 members. The only trolling I do is with a lure out the back of my boat.
Blue Marlin the motor blew up a month before the 1 year warranty was out. However the engine has 4 years of warranty so your theory isn't holding water. Remember I was a very avid Yamaha supporter.
Ok the second half of the post - musta popped up while I was replying to the first half (a "to be continued" mighta been a good idea on the bottom of the first post!).
About the only sympathy I have for you Capt as a fellow charter guide - is that you've let clients down which is never pleasant, and that you can't get any service out of a service industry which as a professional trying to make a living sucks big time.
Personally I wouldn't touch a 2 stroke anything with a barge pole and second, Yam would be last on my list to do any sorta sponsorship deal with, thirdly I'd buy a Merc 4 stroke, a workshop manual, and do all my own services and repairs.
You want it done right - do it yourself is the motto for a guide.
Last time anything went wrong on tour with my merc 4 stroke, I set the client up casting on a nice quiet spot, whipped out the manual, and tools - dropped the cowl, traced the problem and fixed it with spares I carry, popped the hood back on, the manual and tools away and said - lets try the next spot to my client - no excuses, no lost fishing time and a client who KNOWS his guides gonna get him home or die trying.
He was amazed when I pulled out a workshop manual, tools, spares and found the problem / fixed same in about 10 mins.
I suggest you get to know your own outboard if you want to make a living at the game. Waiting in line for mechanical service behind recreational clients at a dealership who are booked out for weeks ahead is NOT a recipe for success in the Charter Guiding business - trust me!
Best a luck with it...once you've had black - you'll never go back...and ohh yeah - the only thing ever broke down on my merc was the poxy Yamaha powerhead in it!
The first piece of mis information is the computer does not control oiling, it is mechanical ! So It sounds to me your first dealer is marginal at best! Now the second dealer, to just look at computer diagnostices and not do a mechanical check to me sounds like they are marginal. A new power head requires the same breakin procedures as a new engine! Yamaha may have some difficulties with this engine, but the two dealers that have been involed don't sound like they really are up to snuff! Which in this case only added to the problems! Could it at all be possible that someone needs to check the oil output at the pump ( dcumented procedure in the repair manual), and also check the injectors! I wouldn't doubt that the new power head got some of the parts from the old power head, of which the problem is with one of the one of the old parts used!
Get yourself a good tech that knows his stuff other than one a dealer is paying that fell asleep during the course. Good question to ask; did these techs go to the HPDI school Yamaha offers? These are differnt animals as compared to the fuel injected and carbed Yamahas. If the tech only went to school on the later, then they are not qualified to work on HPDI's!
Not long after getting the Pathfinder I decided to start my own TV Show. Along with the TV show came sponsor contacts and the like. For the first time in my life I was going to be able to buy a brand new boat with anything that I wanted on it and however I wanted it.
I took this to mean, as I'm sure many others would have, that you could afford this new bells and whistles boat because of the sponsorship deals ergo that the boat and outboard manufacturer are your sponsor.
The only TV Fishing show I ever worked on the "clebrity angling presenters" were provided with a boat, trailer, 4wd etc as part of their sponsorship deal - maybe you needed to negotiate harder!
So - to gget this straight - you bought your OWN boat and outboard and run your OWN TV show - to promote companys & their prodicts who Don't Sponsor you?
Lemme - guess- you pay the TV statio to air it for you too?
The whole industry must love you to bits, come in sucker!
My advice?
Unbolt the Outboard at the dealers, and dump it there - telling them to refund full purchase price, film it for your dshow while your doing it all, and head off down to your nearest Mercury dealer for a new efi 4 stroke - your boating, filming & charter days will get a whole lot easier instantly.
You always have the option to Dump Yama unceremoniously and publicly (on the TV if you have too).
You don't HAVE to choose to get tied up in the ymam problems - yousimple choose to cut n run...it's that simple - they supplied you dud product of unmerchantable quality, if needs be get a solicitor to sue them for loss of earnings 8into the bnargain along with the replacement cost of your new Outboard.
You've been more that fair with them - just cut ya losses sunshine...and get on with makin $ not losing them.
Let Yama lose the $ not you - refuse to "play their game".
Make them play YOUR game - what will they PAY you not to air the Yamaha dud engine segment of your TV show? Goptta be worth a few outboards price to make this go away - so how do you make it go away now it's in the public domain eh?
Balls in your court Capt - what you do with it is up to you - whatever you do, its costing you $, so best do it quick - make your decision and stick with it.
Best a luck, yes you have a legitimate gripe - but there are decisive ways to deal with it or the "injured party way to deal with it, and HOW you deal with it WILL dictate how Yama deal with it - Best you WRITE (email Direct to Yama HeadOffice in Japan and tell them about the new segment you'll be puting to air - 100 reasons NOT to buy a new Yamaha outboard, and WHY Yamah aarent a professional enough crew to deal with fishing industry professionals).
Likely as not someone injapan will have to fall on their samuarai sword over that one - we only get the respect we command - time to command some Kimo Sabi!
Step up to the plate and give it your best swipe!
Maybe when thedealership sees you filming the unbolting of that piece a crap,and you explain it's to send to Yamaha in Japan and to air on TV, maybe they will wheel out a new one and stop pizzing you about!
Someone else with unrealistic dreams of a trouble free new boat, has already ironed out all the bugs in the boat for you at their expense and stress. Just look at Birdy - he had a full head a hair before he bought his Scout with Yamma outboards - now he's bald as a badger - pulled it all out, he did!
HUH?
What the heck are ya talkin bout trouty? Here's the Birdman:
Although I've had a goat-Tee the last year or two.
It's called a V-max, comes in 20" shaft only and had the bullet lower unit with lowered pickup, which he referred to in his original post (Not sure if it was page 1 or 2 )
"Yamaha Horror Story" 
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