Optimax extended warranty upgrade?

A year ago this month, I bought a new Optimax 250 outboard. There was a promotion going on at the time where I got a free extended warranty (covering five years total) rather than the standard warranty (which I gather is three years?).

Recently I got a letter from Mercury offering me to buy an upgrade of the extended warranty from "Gold" to "Platinum." If I understand it correctly, during the basic warranty period (three years) both mechanical and electrical failures are covered, but during the extended warranty, only mechanical items are covered and electrical items are not. By buying the upgrade from "Gold" to "Platinum," the extended warranty will cover electrical items such as ignition components, fuel pump, trim system components and the Smartcraft instrument system. They want $506 for the coverage upgrade.

Any opinions about this? $506 for two years of coverage of electrical components seems high. I've had plenty of experience working on electrical components of my old carbureted two-stroke (I've changed out CDM's, temperature sensors, console components, etc), so I'm inclined to forget about the upgrade and just do it myself if there are any electrical component failures in that time period. (Then again, I'm hoping parts won't start failing when the engine is 3-5 years old. It took a lot longer than that for things to start needing replacement on my old engine.)

i am in the same situation with a 60hp...one year old...i have opted not to buy....my reasoning is the same as yours on the time frame for failure....if i have used the boat for a year i figure the components were good going in and have been well tested...the boat is stored under cover....i know enough to fix most stuff although with the new ones they will have to be hooked up to the computer for some failures...i know to not abuse the electrical system with unnecessary gadgets hooked up...and if i jumper anyone its done with a trolling motor battery etc...batteries are nursed and replaced at 3 years..i will cry if something blows but i can swing it financially...but opinions are like rear ends..everyone has one..good luck...

my only concern about these newer mercs is the oil pump....i have saw one entry in here with more than one participant that have lost power heads with pumps going out..and just this week i had my central air worked on and the guy servicing it has lost one also...one of the guys in the entry on here had lost multiple pumps..but from the way it read he had a bunch of boats in a guide service or something...

Papyson, I checked the letter they sent me, which has a long chart of what parts are and aren't covered under different parts of the warranty. It turns out that the oil pump is covered by my extended warranty without buying the extra coverage.

But that does bring up an interesting question. If you have a failure of a non-covered part, which in turn causes more extensive damage to your engine, would they fix the rest under warranty?

I would buy the warranty. The ECM it self is 2x the cost of the warranty. One direct injector is more than $300.00

Many parts on these fancy new motors are very expensive,---They fail without warning,--------Consult your local dealer and see what they think.

This is a no brainer as if compressor fails (which they due) that is a $900 part and the engine usually needs to torn down and be inspected due to oil supply lines to crank are starved due to compressor debris.....

Here's my two cents on the matter. As others have noted here the parts for these are very expensive - so...

Since we are talking about an engine that you dropped at least $15K on (and probably significantly more with tax, mounting etc), 500 bucks comes out to what? about 3% of the total cost...

So just ask yourself, is the added protection against a big hit to the pocket book, should it need repairs in say 4 years, worth an extra 3% on the cost?

If you spend alot of time in Vegas at a craps table with dice in your hand you may think "no" - so how lucky do you feel...

I work at a mercury dealer I would recomend buying the warranty its cheap insurance I don't know what labour rates are where you are at but its $120 an hour at my shop so if you can't fix the problem yourself with parts and labour $500 comes pretty fast. I would imagine if a part fails that isn't covered under warranty and it does other major damage that they would not fix the problem although mercury is usually good if you have a good dealer who will hound them to fix the problem but like the last guy said its a crap shoot.