4 stroke Mercury swap 150 hp to 200 hp at Vt Home and Marine

[digitroll (ron)]

Catfish Creek has a private launch.

[digitroll (ron)]

8/5/20 update.... The clock shows 262 hours and the 200 has been phenomenal! Added in about 10 tubing trips with the kids and friends. Only 3 hours in the last 3 weeks on Champlain trolling.

[digitroll (ron)]

Boat is in for a trailer inspection / water pump / accessory belt tomorrow at Vt Home. Going to have them hook up the lap top and grab hours ran at different rpm's for the 396 hours on the engine for this season. I have burned 466 gallons of fuel this year off the Troll Control rpm gauge. 1.18 gallons of gas per hour (gph) for the boat on plane + tubing with the kids and trolling. Trips amounted to 80 trips on the water for the year going back to break-in mid-December last year. In addition, 50 hours and 8 trips on three other boats I was a guest. It's been one of the busiest years for me in 40 years on the water in terms of hours and trips combined.

[Detritus]

That's a lot of hours for just messing around on the water, haha. Good work.

We don't have an hour meter on the Country Angler. The Mercury 150 I put on it after the Force ate itself this spring has unknown hours as well, but it's an '03. 135psi on all 6 though. Paid about twice what it was worth this past May, but, that was the market. It does push that boat to 41mph GPS though surprisingly.

Of course a good 97% of our engine hours on that boat are on the Honda 9.9 anyway. I did the math on the fuel consumption on the honda last week. about 40 hours of trolling on a 6 gallon tank! Can't complain with that.

Last little engine hour anectode here, My '04 Mercury 200 EFI on the Triton I bought this fall also doesn't have an hour meter, but, I learned it does have smartcraft, which I bought a bluetooth thing for for my phone. Turns out that engine has 196 hours. That's what, about 9 months of use for you? Also, I can probably burn 40 hours worth of Honda gas through that thing in about 15 minutes if I wanted to.

We've had more time on the water this year than ever before this year too. Probably multiple times past years.

[digitroll (ron)]

We ran a 9.8 Mercury in 1980 then a 9.9 hp then a 15 hp Mercury and replaced that with a 15 hp Honda up to 2006. Re-powered the Sea Nymph 19 with the old two stroke Mercury inline 6 with a 115 hp Mercury 4 stroke as a new introduction late 2006 and took the Honda 15 off the transom and the spare deep cycle battery. 800 hrs when I sold the package to FlyGuy Jan. 2013. Fuel burn trolling was .2-.3 gallons per hour nearly the same as the Honda 15 hp.. He is still using it. I purchased the new Fishmaster 196 Starcraft in Feb. 2013 with a 150 hp 4 stroke Mercury 2nd year of production. Fuel burn was .6 gallons per hour. Sold it last Winter with 1,200 hours on the clock and re-powered with the 200 hp 4 stroke in it's 2nd year of production. Fuel burn is about the same .5-.6 gph with now 396 hours almost triple a normal season for hours for me. On plane fuel economy increased significantly with the 200 hp V6 which really came in handy tubing with the kids this year for the first time.

Burning about 3X the fuel per hour over a kicker. Having trolled now with the main engine since 2007 some 13 seasons it's hard for me to go back to a kicker. Fuel being cheap $2 a gallon the last few seasons makes it easier. If fuel ever went crazy at $4-5 a gallon certainly would consider putting a kicker back on. The boat was ordered with a side control / key switch / cables for a kicker Mercury package. Always an option to put one if warranted. I really like the quietness / no warmup needed with EFI over Carb / thrust of a big prop for boat control while trolling if it gets rough / better performance from my Auto Pilot / One starting battery / runs all my electronics with the 85 amp alternator with a new feature called Idle charge / no weight of a Kicker and big deep cycle on the transom. The new 4 stroke Mercury's are the same weight and a bit lighter than the 2 stroke engines out there which is huge! The bass guys are switching over to the quiet lighter 4 stroke Mercury big engines. Adjusting the rpm's with Troll Control on the rpm gauge is my favorite aspect of running the big engine for trolling.

There is data out there with 4 stroke engines with 7,000-10,000 hours on them used commercially idling all day.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with kickers and are a great option for less fuel burn and a second motor to get home if trouble happens. I have been very fortunate I have never been stranded with the new 4 stroke main engine powering the boat in 13 years. For me it was a personal choice or preference and have been very pleased.

[Detritus]

Yeah, I'd love a modern big four stroke. It's sort of like when efi came out in cars, everybody was all like, ah they're too complicated, I can fix my carburetor, all that. Now, nobody knows how to even start a carbureted car since efi has taken over completely.

I don't think they're all that much harder to fix if they do break either, just maybe more expensive parts, and you might need a code reader to point you in the right direction.

But, there is the whole $18K thing too, and for me, I got to just clean carburetors, mix gas, and swap out rotten hoses and hardware. I wouldn't know anything different anyway, that's what I've done my whole life, haha.

I got another upgrade build post coming up for the Country Angler coming this week though. I'm almost done fabricating an aluminum fuel tank for the kicker that will fit in one of the useless in deck fish boxes. I'm guessing it's going to be about 10 gallons. Can't wait to get rid of the 6 gallon plastic one that's just sitting on the deck. The new tank is going in the opposite side of the boat of the kicker too, to balance it a little better. That rigger on that corner is a pain already because of the kicker, standing another 2 and a half feet away because there's a gas tank in the way doesn't make it any easier.

Waiting on a couple of aluminum weld in bungs, a through hull vent, and a weld in filler neck, pick up tube, etc. It's going to be so much nicer in that back corner, even just to start and tilt the Honda.

I have a few big ticket wish list items for the next few years, a trolling motor with spot lock, and a transducer and mount for Strike Three, so I can use the same head unit, and a fish hawk for the Country Angler.

By the way, I have a voice activated autopilot. "Brody, follow the green depth line I've got highlighted on the chart at about 2.5 mph".

I'd love to check out your setup some day, maybe in a couple years when everybody's off of quarantining from each other.

[digitroll (ron)]

When everyone gets vaccinated Jack and were thru this Covid 19 I can get you out on my boat. Good luck with your projects! Some good stuff! I have been doing this for 40 years and it's a building block type of activity which can be very gratifying. One step at a time.

Here is the hour breakdown from my engine for the year taken off the ECU at the shop a few days ago. No alarms or fault codes as the motor was flawless in the first season. Ton of hours but the nice thing was it was getting some use fishing and tubing with the kids. Win-win!

[digitroll (ron)]

40 years 10 outboards and 4 boats 1980-2020.


1980 9.8 hp Mercury 2 stroke 14 ft Starcraft Utility 1980 (new)
1982 25 hp Mercury 2 stroke 16 ft Starcraft Utility (new)
1984 25 hp Mercury 2 stroke 16 ft Starcraft Utility (Repower)
1985 115 hp Mercury 2 stroke 19 ft Sea Nymph 1985 (new)
1986 9.9 hp Mercury 2 stroke 14 ft Starcraft / 19 ft Sea Nymph
1992 15 hp Mercury 2 stroke 14 ft Starcraft / 19 ft Sea Nymph
1998 15 hp Honda 4 stroke 14 ft Starcraft / 19 ft Sea Nymph
2006 115 hp Mercury 4 stroke 19 ft Sea Nymph (one engine)
2013 150 hp Mercury 4 stroke 20 ft Starcraft Fishmaster (new)
2019 200 hp Mercury 4 stroke 20 ft Starcraft Fishmaster

[Detritus]

Haha, Ron, Is it just me, or can you and I count boats, outboards, and time, like some other guys count fish boated, fish on, and time?

So, that list above puts you at 4 for 10 in 40 years on the water. I would be 7 for 9 in 20 years on the water, (I took about 10 years off in between owning some boats).

I love my 1990 14' Starcraft SF-14. It's an awesome boat. It says on the capacity plate it can take a 35hp outboard too, which I personally think might be a little nuts. I've never GPS'd my Nissan 9.9 (slightly modded), but, I bet that thing is pushing me in that boat low to mid 20's. If I ever see a fixable 35, for dirt, I might grab it, and see what happens just for fun. Be funny to have a little junk boat running in the mid 30's haha.

It's funny the rpm ranges they picked to separate out the different time blocks or whatever. I wonder how much of the 19.9 was also trolling time, maybe into a headwind or waves or something?

[digitroll (ron)]

Those 19 hours Jack are mostly in the 800 range mostly pushing wind / current / waves. I run mostly in the 600's to low 700's to get the most fuel efficiency out of my engine with a bag 50% of the time. Idle is 600 rpm.

My favorite boat was the 16 ft Starcraft Utility with the 25 hp we used trolling and planing that boat would fly wide open maybe 30 mph. We had custom boxes built for our Cannon Mag 10 Electric riggers. Lot of custom work went into that boat. We probably trolled a bit fast but we caught plenty of salmon and walleyes in 3 years out of that boat in the Inland Sea in 1982-1984. My Dad traded a deer rifle for the boat used at a small marina on Bomoseen. Humble beginnings! I was a freshman at UVM in 1980 when the trolling craze began as salmon started showing up at the Cowbanks as we fished for Walleyes mostly at night.

The 115 hp 2 stroke 1985 new on the Sea Nymph was the only motor we never trolled with. It was very smoky and would stall if it idled for too long and was way too fast to troll with at 3.3 mph or better. We ran a stainless prop and would get 44 mph top end. It was a rocket! I can remember only 1 or 2 boats in the day ever beating us in a head to head race in 26 years. The 4 stroke 115 hp I re-powered in 2006 had a top end of 42 mph. It was a 100 lbs heavier. The primary reason I had to ditch the 15 hp Honda. Too much weight!

We duck hunted out of the Starcraft 14 ft and kept that until 2013 when I sold it. The reason we went to a 15 hp from a 9.9 hp and just swapped motors off the Sea Nymph back to the duck boat each fall.