Hondatic - One of the very good pieces of advice I received from my dealer where I bought my 225 was to run the engine as much as possible at WOT for the next 200 hours or so after breakin. That greatly helps to seal the rings and seat the bearings and actually makes the engine more efficient over time. I had been babying the engine after the breakin, and the dealer noted from the HDS that I only had a little over an hour at WOT and there were traces of gas in the oil. That's when he told me that I needed to run the engine harder. I have 1050 hours on my engine now and it is running better than ever. In my personal opinion, it's not how many hours you put on an engine, or how much gas you run through it, but the consistency of operation. I've seem old two-stroke Johnsons and Evinrudes used by commercial fishermen with 10,000 hours or more on them, but they are used almost every day. The Coast Guard folks will put many thousands of hours on the bigger Hondas before changing them out. The worst thing you can do to an outboard is to lay it up for long periods of time.