1985 mercury 50 horse serial a160034

can anyone tell me about this motor? i can not find information about this number. it is on a tag that says mercury serial no. on right side mounting bracket.

The alphanumeric production numbers (serials) first appeared for the 1986 "model year".

**(Merc uses production numbers, not serial numbers. A production number simply is a "next off the production line number" and is does not break down into year, horsepower, assessories etc like other mfg's such as OMC/BRP which encode a pile of information into their "serial" number. A Merc model number will include that info. The production numbers for a given year are often cobbled together to form lists of "what year it was made" as Merc has never been forthcoming in releasing information as to when motors were made in the past. That insured that "any" motor sitting in a dealers showroom was "a current model year". More recently, the production year has been included on the motor itself - most notably on the 40 horse and under 4 strokes which are produced by Tohatsu for Mercury)

In 1985 there were a number of motors built for that model year that ended up with serials that didn't match the production list ranges for those actually designated as either 1985 or 1986 models.

For example, the 1986 50 horse Mercs started with a serial of A912478 (there is actually a 0 (zero) in front of all of these serials, although it's not often included) that were produced in the US. Motors from the Merc plants in Canada and Australia saw serials beginning A7xxxxx and A6xxxxxx respectively, while the Belgian plant continued using the fully numeric 9xxxxxx series numbers.

But like I stated above, a number of 1985 models got the new style numbers, so for 1985, 50 horse models, the serial range can be considered between 6586624 (numeric) and A912478.

When looking for parts you can simply use the start serial for the 1985 models.