carolinaflare
Contributing Member
2005 225hp Mercury Optimax approx 800 hours..
Ok , I am going to attempt to make a long story short:
A friend of mine has this motor on his 23 Dusky CC. About 3 months ago he took it to what was then a Mercury dealer in our area for a 100 hour service. Somehow when they were changing the water pump they cracked the lower unit housing. Of course they only told him this after he dropped by an surprised them one day, after several excuses from them has to why a 100 hr service was taking 2 weeks. They replaced the housing only we assume, However the dealer is now under new ownership and there are no records. We have the work order but it only says that there was a 100 hr service and that they “re-sealed lower unit” ?? Mercury has no record of the boat being in the dealer at this time. The engine is under warranty till March 2011.
This past weekend we ran the boat about 12 miles offshore and fished all day, trolling/live bait drift. On the way home we got on plane and headed in. All the sudden we heard a weird noise and the motor started shaking badly and we lost forward and reverse gear, totally. 12 miles of sea tow and bla bla bla..
We pulled the plug on the oil drain and oil was blackish/brown- not milky, with many chunks of metal. Shift cables are fine, we even disconnected shift cable and tried shifting into gears manually , just to make sure the cable adjustment was ok. Obviously the lower unit is trashed, and probably wasn’t assembled correctly when they removed the guts and swapped housings.
My question is in reference to the first paragraph, the new lower unit has a different serial # now than the original. Mercury says that if the lower unit was replaced then its not covered under warranty. How do they know which is which. Will they know if the inner guts are original or not.
What leg if any do we have to stand on?
Ok , I am going to attempt to make a long story short:
A friend of mine has this motor on his 23 Dusky CC. About 3 months ago he took it to what was then a Mercury dealer in our area for a 100 hour service. Somehow when they were changing the water pump they cracked the lower unit housing. Of course they only told him this after he dropped by an surprised them one day, after several excuses from them has to why a 100 hr service was taking 2 weeks. They replaced the housing only we assume, However the dealer is now under new ownership and there are no records. We have the work order but it only says that there was a 100 hr service and that they “re-sealed lower unit” ?? Mercury has no record of the boat being in the dealer at this time. The engine is under warranty till March 2011.
This past weekend we ran the boat about 12 miles offshore and fished all day, trolling/live bait drift. On the way home we got on plane and headed in. All the sudden we heard a weird noise and the motor started shaking badly and we lost forward and reverse gear, totally. 12 miles of sea tow and bla bla bla..
We pulled the plug on the oil drain and oil was blackish/brown- not milky, with many chunks of metal. Shift cables are fine, we even disconnected shift cable and tried shifting into gears manually , just to make sure the cable adjustment was ok. Obviously the lower unit is trashed, and probably wasn’t assembled correctly when they removed the guts and swapped housings.
My question is in reference to the first paragraph, the new lower unit has a different serial # now than the original. Mercury says that if the lower unit was replaced then its not covered under warranty. How do they know which is which. Will they know if the inner guts are original or not.
What leg if any do we have to stand on?