I sold my Grady White 205 about two years ago. I had repowered it with a Yamaha mechanical F225 4.2L that was manufactured in late 2017. The guy that bought the boat called yesterday and said the starter had failed and wanted to thank me for getting the 6-year warrantee set up. Yamaha paid for the new starter and the installation. They told him that around that time they acquired a batch of starters that are failing. The guy that I sold to lives in St Petersburg, Florida and he keeps the boat on a lift at his home. The starter never gave a moment's hesitation, till one day he lowered the boat into the water and got nothing but a click. No warning at all. A mobile mechanic was called and diagnosed the bad starter and the boat was towed to a marina that is a Yamaha dealer where he learned about the bad starters on that vintage engine. If you have a motor from that time period, you might want to investigate that problem and see if Yamaha has the problem narrowed down to certain serial numbers. Yamaha is known for not volunteering a potential problem/fix but will respond to a squeaky wheel sometimes. That failure on the boat lift at that guy's house was no big deal. Had he been 30 miles out it would have been much more inconvenient. Don't take this as a condemnation of Yamaha, this is just a heads up for fellow boat owners.
Yamaha 4.2 L. bad starters
- Thread starter Halfhitch
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Fishtales
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Interesting. Agree with the comment on Yamaha notification. They don't share info well and you have to be talking to folks on the docks and in the marinas to get the skinny unfortunately. That type of failure is scary for single OB applications. I'd talk to my marina or tech and check. Might be good to proactively do the job versus taking the risk of a real bad day.