I go a long way back.
In the 60s and earlier, you had your OMC and Mercury camps worse than Ford and Chevy ever thought of being.
Dealing with outboards of course.
I was firmly in the Johnson/Evenrude camp. You could not get me in a boat powered by one of those black things.
At that time, Johnson rated their motors according to the industry standard for IC engines.
In other words, at the powerhead. If you bought a custom built truck engine rated to produce a certain horsepower, it would be rated at the crank.
Mercury rated their motors at the prop. Which meant that head to head, a merc would outrun a Johnson.
While this was a more useful rating, we considered it cheating. But, in most cases, they had one characteristic that made up for it.
I have no idea why, but most of the time you could crank a Johnson and be a long ways away by the time the Mercury ever cranked.
I used to outrun 30 and 40 horse Mercurys all the time with my little 10 horse as long as we started with both engines off.
When I bought my Ranger bass boat, it came with a 150 horse Merc. I asked the dealer if he could swap it for a Johnson or Evenrude. And told him why.
He was a factory trained Merc mechanic, and promised me that it would crank.
I told him I would try, but the first time it got me off and left me, I was dumping it in the river.
I must say, other than a few times at first when it failed to crank, it has always done well.
And the times it failed, was my fault.
Now, of course, its all changed. If I had to repower today, I would probably get a Yamaha, but I would look really hard at an E-tech.
