I bought a Stratos 200 pro xl 225 h0 in march of 2003.In Sept. of 2003 lower unit shucked out.Lower unit was replaced and no problems until about a month ago I was fishing a club tourny on a no-wake lake and by the end of the day my starter was growling a little bit.Got home and checked the starter and 2 mounting bolts were missing and the other was about to fall out .Packed her down to the dealer and had it checked out.Bolts replaced, the 2 missing were down in the pan.
Next tourny on 18000 acre lake fished all day ran back to the takeoff cove to finish the last hour out.Went to put her on the trailer and and had a loss of power.Took the boat back out after weighin and only could get 5 grand wot.Started pulling plugs and found the middle cylinder starboard side fouled.Switched plugs,started ok took off and lost the same cylinder again.
Got home called the dealer,said to bring it in later that week.Decided in the meantime to change out the fuel filter.Dropped the pans off and a long bolt falls to the floor.Looked around on the motor and found it to be the power head bolt that comes up from the bottom from the housing.Checked the others,one bolt the head was sheared off and the other four were only hand tight and about to fall out.Called the dealer again and said to bring it down.Got the broken bolt out with an easyout and retorqed the rest and checked the upper powerhead bolts,found them to be loose but not bad,Also found 2 more bolts missing.These were the bolts that are on alll 4 corners of the powerhead that bolt down to the housing,I think my mechanic said these are to help alighn everry thing up when putting on the powerhead.
Took it back down later in the week to address the dropped cylinder problem.More bolts missing!The 2 that hold the reed block for the middle starboard cylinder were plum gone causing the fouling issue.Talked to bomb about these issues and they said they never come across a motor with these issues.Bomb asked me if I had noticed any unusual vibrations that could be vibrating this motor apart, my answer was no.This is the second 225 ho that I have owned and would know right away if it had a vibration that would cause this.Parts are on there way,bomb is going to replace every bolt that we found loose or missing.
My question is has anybody come across this before?I was thinking maybe the first lower unit may have been the cause in that it was causing enough vibrations before it launched to loosen things up and took this long to show up.Any feed back would be appreciated.
Later,
Kelley Joe Clark
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