Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:17:23 -0600, Del Cecchi
wrote:

~~ mucho snippage ~~


So here is a blunt question: If one bought an early Ficht 150, what was
the likelyhood that one would have had major problems with the
powerhead? I have heard the big blocks were better, what is the
comparable number for them? And what had the rate dropped to by the
time of the OMC bankruptcy?

I am, just to satisfy my curiousity, trying to understand whether indeed
2 strokes are barely feasable and direct injected two strokes have
fundamental problems that doom any attempt to make them work reliably,
or whether quality problems, whether isolated or pervasive, caused the
appearance of a flaw.

I heard stories of sooting. I heard stories of poor quality assurance
when switching supplies for parts. But I certainly wasn't in the story
flow. So what is your opinion as to the root cause of the problems?


I can answer a couple of these questions for you.

It was the early 150 FICHTs that had the major problems. And those
were corrected eventually. And if you have an early 150 FICHT that
is running, the likely circumstance is that it's been upgraded and is
ok.

Alice in wonderland stuff!!! It's become a religion for those who have
a boat worth nothing because they're unfortunate enough to have a Ficht
on the back, sorta like hostages making friends with the kidnappers, in
this case you are helping lying dealers talk the BS up so they can rip
more unsuspecting people off with their latest consumer funded experiments.


With respect to DI engines - anything you hear about them being
fundamentally flawed by a certain individual on this newsgroup or by
competitive dealers is strictly personal opinion and unfounded in the
real world. DI is the way to go with two strokes. I am also
impressed by the E-TEC engines - my new boat will have E-TECS.


Well I guess you can say that Tom so I guess as a rejoinder I'm
entitled to say we told you Ficht & Optimax would fail & we were right
except unlike all the other hangers on we told you up front pre the
failures in 98-99 & we even explained why in long tedious detail:-)

Before the subject OMC dealer chokes on his latest glossy E-Tec
marketing brochu-) I have to immediately acknowledge I "personally"
make no claim for myself, that this was a collaborative effort the major
players being my blokes, Marcus & Dell. We all disagreed & even had
"spirited" disputes but in the end ......... we all agreed as Alice said
curiouser & curiouser:-)

You need to find just one single verifiable document Tom that predates
ours & then you can criticise but till then I say we have the runs on
the board, here we say hit for 6, I think you'd say slam dunk???:-).
With E-Tec we'll get even more & again well ahead of time:-) This mad
attempt to make an engine piston strong enough just to live through
detonation??? A giggle of huge proportions!!!

I currently own three FICHTs and with one exception, have never had
any major problems and those problems that I did have weren't much
different that any new engine would have - easily and quickly
correctable. That one exception was related to the electronics
(something that almost never happens even on other type engines - a
stator failure which cascaded into the computer) and not the power
head.



You have no clue what the "major" problem was all you know is what the
dealer chose to tell you or what he parrots from "tech training". But
hey why are you even happy??? you did worse than the head of OMC
admitted???? he only admitted a failure rate of 1 in 5, you sadly got 1
in 3:-)

Gee the major spruiker of Ficht in this NG is a Florida dealer (you
know Tom sun & sand, all year season???) he painted himself as knowing
all there was to know about Ficht & when we immediately saw that Ficht
"couldn't" work because of poor atomisation, lean mixtures at power &
multiple spark firing, he of course personally abused me as only a
spammer can when their sell sell sell line is challenged.

Eventually we showed him how it worked by displaying the Ficht patents
to him then & only then we finally got him to actually measure inside a
Ficht injector because he'd been "taught" at tech training that the
Ficht injector was a solenoid driven piston in a bore!!!:-) huge lie!!!
He actually didn't even know how it worked!!! Even after he found it had
to operate as we had advised that didn't stop him, he continued with the
sell sell sell spam even as people who had fallen for it were suffering
the consequences.

So when the Fichts really started to fail, just as we had "pre"
predicted!! guess what this spammer claimed he'd "never" even seen a
failed Ficht!!! at this time people were putting ani Ficht billboard up
in Texas:-)

Worse much worse in my view, when OMC went under, taking 1.3Bil that's
Bil Tom of union retirees money becasue hey OMC were fully unionised so
the funds just gave them other eople's money!!! (a whole seperate
scandal), 7000 workers got chucked but clearly still not the right
ones:-) & endless boaters were left hanging with faulty motors &
worthless boats, then just like all the other spamming NG OMC dealers he
ran away!!!! & didn't even respond to specific pleas for help from
people who had been conned into buying them.

As to soot - use a good grade gas, make sure you use stabilizer and
use the FICHT oil instead of a industry standard brand. Haven't had
any soot problems yet. I did have on one, but I was using el cheapo
gas on the way to the launch. Switched over and no more problem.

You are being dealer conned; the so called "soot" buildup is because
the lean mixtures make excessive heat which bakes the tiny amounts of oil.

They've blamed every thing & everyone but the truth is it's the poor
atomisation, being too lean at power, unreliable actual ignition timing
when lean & the very risky oiling. It never was the pistons supplier's
fault, gee wake up Tom, the same pistons worked OK in the carbed
versions of the very same engine indeed most still do, the oil?? give it
up this is BS & then the fuel?? what a hoot:-), every other IC engine in
the biggest using country of IC engines runs fine on something we call
petrol, if Ficht can't then they shouldn't be selling them, oops forgot
the laws of physics saw to it they don't, just as they will with E-tec.



I know several shell fish types (clammers) who have FICHTS with
incredible amounts of hours on them and they are running just fine
thank you very much. :)

So what??? 1 in 5 failed!!!!! well in your case 1 in 3 :-) 4 out of 5
is not good enough!!! 95 out of 100 is still not good enough imagine if
5% of Fords engines failed????

Considering they charge more than the price of a medium sized car, you
know Tom, with wheels, tyres. brakes, auto trans, seats, windscreen
wipers, crash testing, etc etc yet these idiots are trying to rip you
off with a an unglorified lawn mower engine hooked to a problematic
right angle drive???


I am a barely technically literate very satisfied FICHT owner - Bill
can give you the heavy duty technical stuff.

Partly right:-) & a classic target to start sleeping with the
kidnappers, hope you don't start robbing banks with them Tom.

Trying to keep the barbarians from giving you a false impression. :)

Trying to keep the actual same people who spammed Ficht from doing it
all over again:-)


Later,

Tom


K

Krause's lie of the day is a bit of a double header sorry, but so
many lies so little time:-)

Whenever his total lack of any real boating knowledge looks like
uncovering him as the sad little liar he is, he posts some crazy list of
boats he claims are his base, here are just a few of his claims, he has
tried to sustain these lies & as each one is shown to be a fabrication
he just invents a new one, the latest is the "Parker".

Don't feel conned nor stupid if you've been taken in by him, he
make exactly the same lies up in the jet ski NGs when he used to pollute
them with his crap, can you believe it he claimed to be a jet skier!!!!!
(responsible & caring in the socialist way of course:-))

This idiot has never owned a boat & never will he is totally devoid
of any boating experience nor knowledge, other than what he picks up in
this NG & the occasional paid charter fishing trip.



Here are some:



Hatteras 43' sportfish
Swan 41' racing/cruising sloop
Morgan 33
O'Day 30
Cruisers, Inc., Mackinac 22
Century Coronado
Bill Luders 16, as sweet a sailboat as ever caught a breeze.
Century 19' wood lapstrake with side wheel steering
Cruisers, Inc. 18' and 16' wood lapstrakes
Wolverines. Molded plywood. Gorgeous. Several. 14,15,17 footers
with various
Evinrudes
Lighting class sailboat
Botved Coronet with twin 50 hp Evinrudes. Interesting boat.
Aristocraft (a piece of junk...13', fast, held together with spit)
Alcort Sunfish
Ancarrow Marine Aquiflyer. 22' footer with two Caddy Crusaders.
Guaranteed 60 mph. In the late 1950's.
Skimmar brand skiff
Arkansas Traveler fiberglass bowrider (I think it was a bowrider)
Dyer Dhow
Su-Mark round bilge runabout, fiberglass
Penn Yan runabouts. Wood.
Old Town wood and canvas canoe
Old Town sailing canoe...different than above canoe




I own the following boats:


a 36' "lobster" style boat
a 19' center console fishing boat
an 11' inflatable dinghy
1/2 of a canoe


Those are the types of boats I currently own. I'm also in the market for
some interesting kind of lightweight flatbottomed skiff, similar to the
old Skimmar, for the "new" 51-year-old 10 hp outboard I recently bought.


One of the boats is kept on dry land within a half mile of Chesapeake
Bay. One is kept at a private covered boat dock in a little creek off
Chesapeake Bay. One is kept in the backyard of a friend who lives much
closer to the Shenandoah River than I do. And one is kept next to the
36-footer."