TheRealDude
New member
I bought a boat that was "water ready" that needed carpet. It had a Mercury Black Max 225 on it. When I drove the 2.5 hours to pick it up, they fired the boat up on a portable tank and it seemed to run a little rough, but I attributed that to it being cold. I didn't know anything about these engines. So we drive it home and it's a couple days before we can fiddle with it. We put fuel in the tank and mixed it to 50:1 after we thought we determined that the tank was empty. It wasn't. I should mention that on the drive home, the broken trolling motor fell apart where they had stuck it together. The speedometer with all the warning lights fell out of the dash. NONE of the gauges were hooked to anything. We get it started but it is running REALLY rough. I think there's maybe bad gas and we just need to let it run until it gets past it. We take it to the lake to attempt to run it. It will not stay running, and won't get up to speed. We accept defeat and now I'm really angry. This guy knew this boat wasn't "water ready". I call him, he puts me off for a day, then we finally speak. He says he didn't even think about the tank and they should've gone through the carbs. He says we didn't mix the fuel with enough oil and probably damaged the motor running it. I've rebuilt more engines than I can count and this one doesn't look too tough. I'm considering legal action, but I also think it might be an easy fix. I do a compression test cold. 85 psi on all cylinders. Then I do a compression test warm, WOT. 85 PSI all cylinders. I spray a penetrant oil in one cylinder. 85 PSI. I take the heads off. Attached is what I found. What would you guys do?
Motor Serial Number 0B199938
Motor Serial Number 0B199938