Reel Repair by Alan Tani

My son-in-law just got a Lowe 1860 Roughneck boat hunting/fishing boat it will handle 6 folks. With our type fishing it is the perfect boat. They are having a blast with the grandkids at a local lake 10 mins from their house swimming grilling on the beach it's great!

https://www.loweboats.com/hunt-fish/roughneck/tiller/roughneck-1860-dt.html

It gave me the fever to get my Jon boat back in action the 74' Evinrude ain't firing on one cylinder. I haven't looked at it in awhile but everything electrical is new but I know being in electronics new parts can be bad. I am going to swap the known good parts one at a time from the good side to the bad.
Plug, points,& coil. All that's left is the flywheel after that.

Anyway a few years ago I bought a 2.5 Suzuki @ online Outboards for my 12ft Jon boat. It was for a great price, its 4 stroke internal gas tank, & weighs only 30# it starts one pull.

I was looking at 9.9HP electric start outboards today & it appears the Honda is the lowest price & has a Carb.

9.9 HP is the largest motor that can be used in our state parks & it's plenty enough for my 14ft Jon boat I don't care about going any faster.

I was told on Tohatsu motors though the only difference in a 9.9 & 15hp is a  governing spacer in the handle that could be removed in the past?

I was thinking Tohatsu & Mercury are the same on the smaller outboards? The Tohatsu are EFI, Honda has Carb but I have always heard the Honda was a good motor.

I do like the look of White Suzuki though, I can fix mine for a lot less but it's fun to look ! 

https://boatmaxonline.com/products/suzuki-9-9-hp-outboard-motor-model-df9-9bthlw5

Can't go wrong with any of the modern 4-stokes, IMO.

There are a few lakes that put HP limits here as well. My buddy bought a used cowl and then bought a 9.9 decal set for his 15hp motor. Where there's a will there's a way!

Steve

Tohatsu was manufacturing Mercury's small 2 stroke engines in Japan, very good motors.
4-stroke Tohatsus are, to my knowledge, just Hondas with different paintjobs. This certainly remains the case with the large ones but the smaller ones look to be something different so it is possible Tohatsu is producing their own now.

The Tohatsu 9.9, 15, and 20 all look to use the same block. Don't believe the "it just has a spacer that stops the throttle" stuff, it's not 1992, these are electronically controlled engines and the lower output ones will have a different tune on the ECU. Why would you manufacture a physical part when you could just set some numbers in a table? They have the same max RPM so it's unlikely to be something as rudimentary as a throttle limiter.
The higher output motors may have different ancillary parts as well, like a different camshaft or manifolds.

Has the world progressed enough that full electric outboards are practical yet? They seem a lot cheaper than a regular outboard, with the difference being spent on batteries.

Am I crazy for thinking the risks of playing with electricity on the water might start being outweighed by the economics of so many fewer moving parts and aging seals to rely on?

I'll stick to my internal combustion on the road until you pry that gas pump out of my cold dead fingers. But on a boat... Hmm it's got me thinking.

Batteries are still a long, long way from the energy density of good old liquid dinosaurs. You can get small fully electric outboards with integrated batteries which are a great option for a tender on a larger boat, where it's not running long distances and you have mains power at each end with which to top it up.

Jason,

We have small propane fueled outboards here. Don't know anything about them but you can plug a small Wlamart type lantern canister in them or pipe it to a 7-pound tank.

Again, I don't know enough to have an opinion, but I've seen them on boats.

Steve