SlimJim said:
Congrats Chris! Glad you got it done before anything happened to you at sea. You would think that Yamaha would have sent you a notice about this or the dealer you bought the boat from. What did you think the buzzing noise was when you 1st heard it?
Me too. It's a relief.
I don't have a dealer, I bought from a private party and the engine was brand new, in fact it had only been test run, but had not been out on the water yet. And I don't have a dealer because I do everything myself. Here I am at 310 hours and the boat has never been to the shop.
So I call Andy at SIM when I have a question. And I have a couple of dealers out here that I have somewhat of a business relationship with, so any of them could have done this work.
I just thought the buzzing sound was a simple characteristic of the model. It comes on over such a long period of time that by the time you notice it it seems like it was always there. And I thought maybe the faint squeeling sound I would get a about 2000rpms would go away after greasing the driveshaft on the impellor change - not. Again, just figure it was a typical characteristic. These newfangled machines these days make all kinds of whirs and clicks, you know? All of my cars and rigs make all kinds of funny noises, I've got a 8.1L GM in a motorhome, it makes all kinds of noises, a duramax diesel - clattering and chattering, a BMW that whirs and clicks all sorts of noises, so you just figure everything is normal 'till it does something it hasn't done before, or it quits, or you get a trouble light.
Yamaha isn't doing a recall on these, which also seems to be typical with new technology. They wait 'till there's a problem and then they pay to fix it. My motorhome has brakes that are known to fail and it took a full investigation by the NHTSB over several years to get a premliminary recall bulletin issued from Workhorse. And my diesel has bad bosche injectors and they extended the warranty for 7 years or 200K miles but they only fix your rig if you bring it in with a problem. And they all have the problem and will long after the warranty runs out. Then what do you do? It's a $5,000 repair job!!
Anyway, I'm glad to have found it. Can't wait to try it out, didn't get to do that this weekend. My dealer said, "Yep, they (gears) were bad." All of the techs are aware of the issue, ALL OF THEM!
BTW, I got a computer print out that was pretty interesting. They show EVERYTHING on these motors. Especially the hours run:
100 hours under 1000rpm
100 hours 1000-2000rpm
54 hours 4000-5000rpm,
And the rest spread out over the range
310 total
That's from all that harbor cruising and trolling.
Only 54 hours cruising? That's surprising!
