Weird happening

[pumatrac]

I was at the ABA Nationals last week on Lake Murray and had a freaky thing happen to the Merc. I was about 10 miles from the launch on the second day of practice and wasn't doing anything. I decided to try another area and when I went to move, could only get 4000 rpm out of the engine. I stopped, checked the hotfoot etc, but still couldn't get the engine to turn up. It finally quit running when I put it in gear and would only idle really rough. I made it back to the ramp on the trolling motor and got it into a local Merc dealer. When they pulled the covers, we found the compressor pulley had sheared all the bolts holding it on. This was a first for the dealer. They had seen bad compressors, but not shearing the bolts. They replaced the bolts, scanned the engine and load tested it in the drive-in test tank. It appears there was no other damage and I was back on the water for day 3 of practice. The bolts looked like they had all not sheared at the same time as you could see the clean metal on the latest breaks. They are only torqued to 12 ft lbs. and held with loc-tite, so I can only assume they were torqued wrong, or had started to back out over time and broke. You might want to check yours and save yourself a long ride back to the ramp.

[SETDHK]

Dont know what size your merc is but my 225 opti (not xs) did the same thing. Sandersons fixed mine, had to get new compressor and pulley. Might be more common then they think. Sandersons told me they have seen this before.

[Jig A Low]

check on the Merc. boards, seem like I remember reading quite a few incidents of this happening, I think Don suggested replacing the bolts with grade 8's. check me on this though, it's just from memory and that aint that good.

[pumatrac]

It's a 225 Pro XS. I think I'll give Sanderson's a call and see what they think. The engine's still under warranty, so the dealer in SC didn't want to use anything but Merc parts.