Inboard or outboard for saltwater?

[Encore 280]

If you're not worried about the price, E TEC all the way for me. I'd get rid of my wife before I would my E TEC and I really really love my wife. :-)

I take it your wife doe not visit this site

She feels the same way!!! She'd get rid of me before the E TEC!! She loves that motor!! I'm on my second one, sold the first one a 75hp with my other boat then bought a 90hp for my 17' Arima Sea Pacer.

[jamesfromseattle]

A little late to the thread, but as a relatively non-mechanical person who likes boats I think all the advice above is right on.

I had an I/o and loved the feel of the boat and I'm sure it was a would have been as reliable as any engine if maintained properly. However, it was too darn confusing for me to stay current on the maintenance so I let a lot of stuff get run down. For that reason, I'm sticking with outboards in the future.

[Encore 280]

One thing I like about the E TEC is there's no break in period, like run it at so many rpm's for an hour or so then run it at another hour at some many rpm's and I don't know how long this goes on. The E TEC's ya jump in, hit the key and go and that's it. The pistons I guess are made of the same material the space shuttle outer ceramic shell is made of to reduce heat. Whatever it is, I'm a believer. The new G2's I think are butt ugly!

[Alchase]

I can remember mornings after crossing the Ilwaco bar getting out to the fish and looking back towards land,
and seeing nothing but a line of two stroke smoke the first 20 feet off the water, LOL

[2labs]

Check out www.seven-marine.com.  A Corvette engine turned into a outboard.

[MarkyMark]

Son of a gun I did jinx myself.... Carb float stuck open. Took the bowl off, wiggled the float a bit. Reinstalled bowl with new gasket. Now seafoam. Lots of seafoam. Lots of crud coming out. Think I forgot to seafoam last year. Yuck. Seemed to have worked.


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[magnanimous_j]

The only times I have been on boats with some sort of motor failure are inboards. I would never own one and never even consider buying one.

Something tells me you never had an early 90's bayliner. 

Yeah, but that was just thanks to those wonderful Force outboards....   

When I was a kid, my dad bought a brand new Bayliner bowrider with the Force 120 (I think). We were living in central Oregon then and took it out to some big lake out there. This motor probably had less than 10 hours on it and he took it right to the dead center of this lake and it died. You have to understand, my dad is very much a "all bark, no bite" kind of guy, so watching him red-faced scream at this boat for an hour until someone got close enough to flag down (this was the early 90's, no cell phones) is something my mom and I still give him crap about.