full: I was sent a Mercury 4 cylinder, 4 stroke, efi, 61 ci, 40hp motor with the standard gearcase and a 60hp ecu to test. That was around 2000 or 2001 somewhere about then. The motor burned a valve about 18 months ago. Mercury asked me to pull the data from the ecu for them to see. The motor had over 2400 hours operation, 97% of the time was at 100% throttle. It hit the 6250 rpm rev limiter over 460 times, shut down on overheat over 360 times. Finally burned a valve. NEVER changed a single part on that motor, NOT ONE! Changed oil and filter once a year and ran Valvoline full synthetic oil. I think that is probably more hours of torture than 99% of people put an outboard through. I would own another in a heartbeat. Only reason I am running a tohatsu now is that unit I had is not available to the public configured like I had it. Their 40hp 4 cylinder comes only with a bigfoot gear case. I have never owned a Suzuki outboard, so I can't speak about them. I can say that Mercury was the toughest unit I ever owned. And it was fast. I ran it first on a 1552 WeldBilt boat. After I broke all the welds in that boat, I went to a 1556 Edge Performance hull. Loaded with 3 batteries, 82# motorguide, 2 men, all fishing gear, it would run 45 mph all day in the marsh. It had grunt and top end power. Switching to the 53 ci Tohatsu 40/50 4 stroke, I now run 40mph with the same load.I am totally happy with the tohatsu, I was thrilled with the mercury.
Danny
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