wrote in message
...
On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 13:57:48 GMT, Jim
wrote:



wrote:

It's a cheaply built outboard with low price being it's only advantage.
It's
very noisy, not especially clean burning and not designed for long term
reliability. Other than that, it's great!

Are you basing this on personal experience? I've not seen one in
operation myself except for the video provided by a poster on this
newsgroup. It certainly didn't sound loud, well, at least compared
to a 2-stroke :^) and didn't appear 'dirty'.

Personal experience, as in "owning" one of these cheapo's is totally
irrelevant. You don't have to buy one to know exactly what it is, and more
importantly, what it IS'NT.

As far as loudness, it can't be avoided in this design. It's air-cooled
and the
exhaust is not under water, either. The sound level in an ad is the LAST
place
to look for this. Ever see a TV ad for a Jet Ski? No noise at all! Just
some
upbeat music, and scenes of girls in bikinis.

The motor is not "marinized" in any way, and is aircooled. Aircooled
engines
(all of them) are built to much looser tolerance specs, due to the
unavoidable
fact that aircooled engines heat up quickly, run hotter, and the heating
is not
evenly dispersed. That means that clearances for things like piston to
cylinder,
and ring end-gaps must be larger. All air cooled engines are by nature
"dirty",
and do not live as long as water cooled engines. What Briggs & Stratton
did was
take an existing (and not especially great) engine designed for powering a
lawn
mower, and splice it onto an outboard engine lower unit.


I mowed many a lawn with the standard 3.5hp Briggs...

That thing ran and ran and ran. (rather loud I do admit)

I would not consider them disposable by any means.

db








For what you describe, I'd recommend a high powered Electric that can
get you to
the fish almost as fast as the Briggs, and then troll silently, all
with one
unit.

Are you suggesting a trolling motor or an electric outboard?

??? An Electric trolling motor IS an outboard.

BB