1981, 115hp mercury mariner

[debo350]

Ca someone tell me if these mercury mariners inline 6 a good motor or bad motor,far as maint. on these motors and far as what are the pros and cons, motor runs good but ust hear alot of bad talk about them, any info would be a blessing!

 

[CharlieB]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

There are a LOT of guys that would sooner let there wife/girlfriend go than to get rid of their 'Tower of Power'.

Ain't NOTHING sweeter than the sound of an old stacked six at full song.

 

[debo350]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

Ok I'll take that for what its worth, but what about how good do they hold up to abuse this motor is on a 22' aquasport cc, I'm wondering do it have the gutts to plane it, then if not I have a johson 175 v6 to replace it

 

[CharlieB]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

With that much boat I would make the exception, go for the HP.

 

[dwco5051]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

I am running a 175GT V6 on my twenty foot bass boat and I have to agree with CharlieB and go with the power. All that being said I sure miss the sound and looks of the inline Merc that was on my previous fishing boat

 

[debo350]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

Let get one thing straight, I'm not trying to fly anywhere I just want a reliable motor that I ca work on and spend more time on the water, the guy that I got the boat from said that it would do 25 knots or a little better, i know thwt johnson are good they are my motor of choice, but the deal that I got on this boat was unpassable, so with all that said are the mercury motors as good as the johson, and I also have a 1974 85hp ohnson that looks show room clean and still has 115 psi per cylinder, this mercury has 126 on 5 the bottom has 122, is this good??

 

[dwco5051]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

Any older motor is going to require some TLC. It is the old Chevy vs. Ford type of thing on which is the best. The Merc may require a little more attention to wiring due to its age. I wouldn't worry about the compression readings you got. Normally if you have a bad cylinder it will be the top one. #6 is a little more difficult to get to to check compression and if you were using a plug in Rather than a screw in gage that may be the reason for the slightly lower reading. The rule of thumb is that they all be within 10% of each other.

 

[debo350]

Re: 1981, 115hp mercury mariner

Ok so I can say the merc is ford and johnson is chevy, reason is that all johnson and evinrudes are easy to work on not alot of wires running all over and the merc seems to be like ford never easy to get at anything unless you have small hands and I don't qualify for that, as you probably can tell that I'm achevy guy, but one thing that I can say is that I see alot of these things on boats from old to new, so that has to say something, as the old saying go if it not broke don't mess with it, and just to say the guy when I got this boat told me that he spent around 1600 for some wiring parts and coils so with that said I should be in the clear far as the wires go?