Revolutionary Motors Should Float Your Boat
Over the years, even though manufacturers produced outboard motors that glowed with brilliance, inside each of those shiny cases was an engine that didn’t exactly beat like a heart of gold.
I’ve seen hundreds of frustrated men in their boats, screaming at their engines, trying to get them to work right.
But all that is changing, and the best evidence of it is the new generation of outboard boat motors on display at boat shows this season.
Johnson is now producing a new fuel injection system for its big outboards that will make them run nearly twice as long as previous designs. Honda’s 4-cycle outboards are so quiet and clean that it is unbelievable to anybody who has yet to hear and see them. Yamaha’s new line is getting a reputation in the past year for the easiest starts imaginable, then never a second thought over operation.
There are many examples. In the next five years, the improvements in engines will probably be the most dynamic changes in all the outdoors, on any level of any field. The new engines will start easy, run quietly and cleanly at any speed, and get great gas mileage.
What happened? How did this happen? And why has it taken so long?
Outboard manufacturers are finally abandoning the post-World War II technology they sat on for the past 50 years. Since 1945, outboard motors had basically been carbureted two-stroke motors, and although they have been downsized, tweaked a little and made prettier, they have been the same basic engine. Because of that, they have eventually caused the same basic problems for countless people.
But in the past two years, two critical things happened:
Carbureted two-cycle engines were banned at Lake Tahoe (starting next year) because they cause water pollution, which occurs when about 25 percent of the oil mixed into the gas for cooling passes through the engine unburned;
Honda introduced a 4-cycle outboard, where the oil is in a crankcase, rather than mixed with the gas, and it immediately became the quietest, cleanest-running outboard engine ever produced.
In turn, the feeling inside the industry is that it is inevitable the Environmental Protection Agency will ban two-cycle carbureted engines. And at the same time, the public reacted so positively to Honda’s new motor that the other manufacturers are now in the hunt to come up with even a better outboard, from the little 2-horsepower jobs up to the V6s and V8s.
For an industry that has long been in the dark ages, this is the kind of news that will revolutionize outboards.
Tons of leftover, two-cycle, carbureted outboards will be available quite cheap, as dealers dump the last vestiges of 1940s technology.
xxxx COMING UP The Spokane National Boat Show opens Friday at The Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds. The show runs through Feb. 8.