Problem Summer

[Towdaddy]

So we had our dealer put our boat back in the water in late May. Took it out 2-3 times in late May and over the Memorial Day weekend with no issues. Had a series of trips in June (including a Jimmy Buffett concert in late June) and did not get to use the boat the entire month. Used it over the week of the fourth of July and could only get 24-25 mph instead of the usual 35-37 mph. The motor ran fine, no misses, and idled with no roughness at all. Everything ran normal except with much less power. I thought that I had got a bad tank of gas but called my dealer to check it.

The mechanic (who I know well and has taken care of my boat since I bought it) called after he checked it and said he got no fault codes. He was going to check the data dump that evening and get back to me. Turned out I had two pencil coils going bad which turned my 225 into a 150. The motor still had a month left on the 5 year extended warranty so Merc not only changed out the 2 bad ones but also replaced the 4 others. VRods has had an issue with pencil coils and Merc has recognized the problem. My understanding is that they are even changing them on motors that are recently out of warranty. Mechanic also found a couple of other issues which he fixed as well.

Took a trip out this weekend and motor acts fine and speed is back up to 32-33 but I think that any loss now may be due to all the crap growing on my toons.

The other issues is that the POS Lowrance 520c that came with the boat finally died this year. After calling Lowrance 3 times, I finally got someone that could do the exchange for me. The exchange is roughly 50% off a new unit and I have an HDS8 on the way now. Hope to get it this week and mounted this weekend.

I won't bore you with the other non-boat related issues this year, but it has been one of those years where you constantly are fixing a bunch of things and trying to get service in a time when customer service has generally died (At least my boat dealership still believes in good customer service!). I feel like its death by a thousand paper cuts this year.

Hope everyone else is having a great boating year!

[ROLAND]

Jeff... hate to hear about all those issues, but happy to hear that merc stepped up to the plate and took care of it for you... Sounds like they went above and beyond.... Good for you...

[Darin]

Hate to hear that you're having some issues. Boats are money pits and stands for Bust Out Another Thousand. Welcome to Boating!

[Bryden24shp]

Verado pencil coils and fuel floats. I know what you mean!
Hope the rest of your season is better than the start....

[rsmith]

I too will be hoping for a stronger end of the summer and boating season than the start. And I'll cross my fingers for my Verado, I'm on season 4.

[rbiederwolf]

I believe in the cup is half full theory, thus be thankful it broke this month and not two months from now

[Towdaddy]

I did some reading on the Verado forum and one thing I thought interesting was that if your motor was mounted low and you stopped quickly that the backwash would put water on the bottom two pencil coils and shorten their life. Not sure I completely buy into that one.

This is the first issue in almost five years and frankly I still love the performance of these motors. If I hadn't gotten the VRod, I would have gone with a Yammy.

My only regret is not going for the 300 from the start.