My MERC comes off warranty this year so Im planning on self repairing it.
My manual describes a neat diagnostic detector the
Digital Diagnostic Terminal
Mercury part number 91-823686A2
which has ooodles of cool functions for diagnosing motor problems.
My guess is this is $1000+ unit.
Any Mercury owners interested in pooling resources to purchase for group use??
With motor labour fees at $75 an hour, a price of $100 for me would seem reasonable. Details would have to worked out of course.
The unit can download your operating hour history as a function of rpm, for instance, for you log freaks.
Okay, the $100 limit is really the Admiralty imposed no-approval required purchase limit, I confess.
Calling all Mercury Engine Owners ...Shared Diagnostic Tool
-
Catigale
- Site Admin
- Posts: 10421
- Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:59 pm
- Sailboat: MacGregor 26X
- Location: Admiral .............Catigale 2002X.......Lots of Harpoon Hobie 16 Skiffs....Island 17
- Contact:
Ouch - this puppy is expensive
Found it for sale at Stem To Stern in the Buckeye State
Ill have to watch for it on ebay
$1200 new
Found it for sale at Stem To Stern in the Buckeye State
Ill have to watch for it on ebay
$1200 new
-
Catigale
- Site Admin
- Posts: 10421
- Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:59 pm
- Sailboat: MacGregor 26X
- Location: Admiral .............Catigale 2002X.......Lots of Harpoon Hobie 16 Skiffs....Island 17
- Contact:
YY - No offense taken and none meant. I dont begrudge these guys a living at all. In the words of the late John Muir, I am an advanced shade tree mechanic but not on outboards.
If one has a difficult problem with your outboard, by all means I would take it to a pro so I can get back to boating. Just looking over the factory service manual, the tool does give a lot of useful info on fuel pressure, coils, temps, etc that I think I could use successfully to solve a problem.
The big thing IMHO is the 'latching' feature which will trap an intermittent fault and store it in memory for recovery.
Counter point by example
I had a stumbling idle problem with the Admirals Volvo and had a $500 'diagnosis estimate' which wouldnt address the problem, just would tell me what was wrong.
I got an OBD data reader from Harrison Engineering for $150 (works on all three cars!!) and readout the codes....intermittent fault in the Air Flow Box..this attaches with two hose clamps.
For $15 per car, ALL data on the web gives you access to Factory service manuals with updates. Turns out on their web there was a service bulletin on cleaning the Air Flow Box to avoid stumbling idle.
Ill confess the price point on this thing is way out of line with what it would cost to build this device. My Oliver Stone brain region makes me wonder how much training these guys really get and how much of the value resides in the High Priest's diagnostic tool. Boat US this month had an article on how hard it is to staff repair shops as they want to pay these guys $15-20$ an hour....I doubt you are going to get high end gals/guys at that salary scale, especially where some of you guys live
The car industry was forced to adapt OBD standards which pushed the same sort of devices way down in price - you can actually talk to your car with a slow serial port without any hardware if you want to write some code.
If one has a difficult problem with your outboard, by all means I would take it to a pro so I can get back to boating. Just looking over the factory service manual, the tool does give a lot of useful info on fuel pressure, coils, temps, etc that I think I could use successfully to solve a problem.
The big thing IMHO is the 'latching' feature which will trap an intermittent fault and store it in memory for recovery.
Counter point by example
I had a stumbling idle problem with the Admirals Volvo and had a $500 'diagnosis estimate' which wouldnt address the problem, just would tell me what was wrong.
I got an OBD data reader from Harrison Engineering for $150 (works on all three cars!!) and readout the codes....intermittent fault in the Air Flow Box..this attaches with two hose clamps.
For $15 per car, ALL data on the web gives you access to Factory service manuals with updates. Turns out on their web there was a service bulletin on cleaning the Air Flow Box to avoid stumbling idle.
Ill confess the price point on this thing is way out of line with what it would cost to build this device. My Oliver Stone brain region makes me wonder how much training these guys really get and how much of the value resides in the High Priest's diagnostic tool. Boat US this month had an article on how hard it is to staff repair shops as they want to pay these guys $15-20$ an hour....I doubt you are going to get high end gals/guys at that salary scale, especially where some of you guys live
The car industry was forced to adapt OBD standards which pushed the same sort of devices way down in price - you can actually talk to your car with a slow serial port without any hardware if you want to write some code.