Best Small Outboard

[steve66]

Hi Simon,
It all depends on how much you use the engine, if your using it every other weekend leaving the fuel in wont hurt. If its going to be months before you use it drain the fuel out of it by draining the bowl. If you run it dry you will still have nearly a quarter of a bowl of fuel still left in due to the position of the fuel pick up holes in the carb body.
To be honest all of the carb problems i see on Hondas only approx 5% are failures due to corrosion, the rest are due to blocked jets.

Will leaving the fuel in help ?
Or buy a better engine, which would be ???

 

[chewi]

We bought the Honda 2.3 earlier this year and are very happy with it. It certainly has its faults - noisy compared with others and the automatic clutch can be snatchy, but its light weight and lack of flushing won me over. Some owners have questioned its life expectancy, but it comes with a six year warranty - if it dies the day after the warranty expires, I'll consider that I got value out of my £500 - and I will not have had to pay the osteopath bills that would go with lifting some of the others onto the dinghy.

A lot of the reported clutch snatch is associated with a new engine - by the time it has done 20 hours and had a service, it will be a lot smoother.

You may weel not clock up 20hrs in a season.
The warranty is conditional on them servicing it, and Honda are not cheap for that.
They will not replace the rusty mild steel bolts, and the warranty excludes damage caused by biofuels, which you probably are using.
You are better off doing it yourself, then at the end of the warranty the bolts will still be undoable ( if you took the opportunity to replace them), and the carb may be intact ( if you avoided the corrosion.)

 

[maby]

You may weel not clock up 20hrs in a season.
The warranty is conditional on them servicing it, and Honda are not cheap for that.
They will not replace the rusty mild steel bolts, and the warranty excludes damage caused by biofuels, which you probably are using.
You are better off doing it yourself, then at the end of the warranty the bolts will still be undoable ( if you took the opportunity to replace them), and the carb may be intact ( if you avoided the corrosion.)

Depends on pattern of usage, I guess. I have no difficulty clocking up the hours between motoring to the shops and providing safety boat cover when my wife is wind surfing.

 

[chewi]

Depends on pattern of usage, I guess. I have no difficulty clocking up the hours between motoring to the shops and providing safety boat cover when my wife is wind surfing.

true enough, many only go from shore to mooring a few weekends a year.

 

[Twister_Ken]

You may weel not clock up 20hrs in a season.
The warranty is conditional on them servicing it, and Honda are not cheap for that.
They will not replace the rusty mild steel bolts, and the warranty excludes damage caused by biofuels, which you probably are using.
You are better off doing it yourself, then at the end of the warranty the bolts will still be undoable ( if you took the opportunity to replace them), and the carb may be intact ( if you avoided the corrosion.)

Or buy the Suzy Q.

 

[steve66]

You may weel not clock up 20hrs in a season.
The warranty is conditional on them servicing it, and Honda are not cheap for that.
They will not replace the rusty mild steel bolts, and the warranty excludes damage caused by biofuels, which you probably are using.
You are better off doing it yourself, then at the end of the warranty the bolts will still be undoable ( if you took the opportunity to replace them), and the carb may be intact ( if you avoided the corrosion.)[/QU
A word of caution about replacing fasteners on Honda 2 and 2.3 motors. Be careful about replacing with Stainless fasteners. If not protected you get an awful lot of galvanic corrosion on the threads which in turn can sieze and snap off. Trust me a soft rusty bolt with a chewed up head is far easier to remove than a snapped stainless bolt. I replace as a matter of course now with plated mild steel.
Chewi, if you check your manual you will see Honda recommend normal 95 octane pump fuel and has been designed to run in the States where their pump fuel uses a higher proportion of Ethanol than our pump fuel. If there was such a big problem with Bioethanol in the carb, the tip of the needle valve would be the first to disintergrate followed by the fuel line.
I used to build modified high compression Honda gx160 kart race engines and used to run 50/50 Ethanol Unleaded and know first hand what damage Ethanol does to rubber/ neoprene products. Incidentally it never corroded the carb body

 

[chewi]

Or buy the Suzy Q.

Maby already has his Honda, I'm suggesting he questions the value of the service and warranty combination.
I can advise as a Honda owner, and the outboard is a disappointment to a longtime Honda biker.
Exposed mild steel bolts 6 inches from sea water and a mild steel carb bowl are inexcusable in my book,
likewise the brass in mild steel drain screw for the carb. The head strips before the screw turns.

I can't advise to buy the Suzy, as I dont have one but they do dseem to have a good reputation.

 

[Hydrozoan]

A good well sorted one is fine, but people do not sell well sorted ones, they sell the ones that have been bodged and have been giving them gyp all season.The only safe way to acquire a seagull is to inherit it. Unless you can still dig them up on the D-Day Beaches?

I was lucky enough to buy one, about 10 years ago, from a Thames (non-tidal) river chandler. It was virtually pristine after nearly 25 years and had evidently had very little use. Some would say that if you did dig one up from a D-day beach, it would start on the first pull - but I won't go that far!