Hi all. New member here, so be gentle! I just purchased a used 2003 200 hp Opti (Saltwater) in the last 2 months to replace my old Blackmax on my fish and ski. The motor looks to be in great shape, despite the salt water usage which wasn't that many hours. My mechanic and I hooked it all up, and when I test ran it for the first time on the lake a week ago, it ran great! Just like a scalded dog! Wonderful acceleration with no hesitations, beautiful up on plane right away, got 5400 rpm (just right) on the prop I installed at full throttle. Max speed over 50 mph (plenty for an old guy like me!) Anyway, I took it down to Amistad near Del Rio on a fishing trip the day after for 3 days. The first day, it ran perfect, no problems. Second day, things started happening. First off, when at FOT, I began to notice a very jolting drop in RPM (500, or so) whenever I would hit the trim switch. Didn't know what to think, but since I pretty much need to have the motor trimmed full down anyway, I decided I'd worry about this later and try to enjoy the fishing. So that went on till late in the afternoon. THEN, the next thing that happened is my top-end RPM began to be limited . . . I couldn't get above 3000 or so RPM. AND, at low RPM, I noticed the engine sounded like it was missing a bit and definitely NOT running with the smooth raw power that I'd noticed when I first ran it. I've looked on line at various places, and a number of people seem to think that this sort of thing is what happens with either bad battery connections, a bad battery itself, or perhaps a bad alternator (ie, all electrical problems). Haven't visited with my mechanic about this except a brief telecon, and he says maybe water in the gas. I DID find out that the battery is at the end of it's useful life (O'Reilly Auto Parts tested it and said it was pretty much toast, so I replaced it with a new Marine battery with 1000 CCAs). I ALSO noticed that when I took the old battery out, it was just a bit of a loose connection on the + terminal (yep, I use wing nuts - I'm not gonna make that mistake anymore though . . . the new battery has stainless steel hex nuts). And to top it off, I also realized that somehow, I DIDN'T have the main cable from the alternator on the bottom of the stack on the positive terminal ofthe battery. I've since gleaned from on line that this is also a Romper Room no-no. A local Merc dealer who looked at the boat for me for about 5 minutes also said that the fuel line I currently have is a bit pinched and is NOT a MERCURY fuel line, so I'll probably replace the fuel line, as well. I may even bore a separate hole for it thru the lower cowling, since it appears all my cables in the cable bundle are kind of compressing the fuel line some. So, before I go out and buy a whole new alternator to boot, would anyone care to chime in? I welcome all comments. Thanks! Mike