200hp Optimax, Fuel Figures

[Steve B]

FNQ, I agree with you. I thought that milage seemed a bit much, but I did a few calculations about the distance up and down monduran and the amount of times I did it over 2 days (7.2hrs on tacho) and I think it must be right!! the hull is a 5m makocraft frenzy with a fair few extras like rodlockers, livewell, electric and batteries etc. Top speed was about 68km perhour 42MPH at 5700RPM with 19P 4 blade trophy S/S prop. Just me in it without much gear.

The dealer put about 5 litres in at sale (they are all heart!!! ) and I put another 50 litres in before run in, I run it down to just on empty mark (where it was when I bought it)
Apprarently the computer in them recognises when 10hrs is up and automatically reverts to normal running mix.

About smoke, I was quite suprised. It did momentarilly if you get up it after idleing for any length of time and you got a good wiff of 2 stroke!! but any other time it didn't,

A 10 litre bottle of oil was $100. thats pretty expensive, so I hope the oil consumption improves

[FNQCairns]

Thanks for the extra info Steve b, looks like if anyone is going to get outstanding economy it is you, the 90 is a 3cyl, it is also DI, and by the numbers you gave at wot you are achieving almost 4% prop slip!!! that's in theory about as good as it gets, the hull must be an efficient one as well.

Whoever chose your prop got it right for your rig, which is overall unusual IMO.

Of coarse the results do depend on whether the Trophy 4blade 19P does in practice travel 19inches per rev but still in theory those are brilliant numbers.

Lake boats run pretty light mostly and your engine is still to loosen up, a good prop to stick with IMO

cheers fnq

[Dicko]

I don't understand what's going on!! Thought these new tech o/bs were all about better economy - everywhere.

cheers fnq

They are about economy, but some are also about making a continuous stream of money.

The prices of oil getting quoted here are ridiculous, I run a 90 tohatsu TLDI, which is a similar system to the optimax & use valvoline HP 2 stroke oil (Fortified Synthetic, TC W3 certified). It's about 25 or 26 bucks regular price for 5 litres at places like supa cheap auto, or about 19 to 22 per 5 litres on special. With the mixture rates of these things around 100 to 1, and using regular unleaded, they are very economical.

The combined fuel/oil running cost is only about 4 cents per litre on top of the fuel pump price you pay for unleaded. Which still works out cheaper than buying premium unleaded, which most seem to use in their injected 2 strokes & 4 strokes anyway. (This also throws out one of the arguments of the added oil cost in the 2 stroke vs 4 stroke debates that often happen. lol)

It's also one of the oils on the recomended list by Tohatsu ,and is one of the oils sold & used by the dealers.

I run it in previous 2 strokes for many years and now in the injected 2 stroke for 2 years and no problems.

I'd be interested to see the 'technical' (as in not marketing) reason why a cheaper alternative oil like this is not on the recomended list for an E tech, or Optimax.

Having a recomended list of oils which consists of 1 or 2, which are only supplied by the manufacturer/dealer sounds like a recipe for a con job to me.

[craigie]

Dicko,

You make some interesting points.

It begs the question, Ain't Oils, Oils and what's the difference ??

I run my Opti on the Manufacturer recomended Quicksiler (Mercury) product, would no doubt void my warranty if I didn't. But now that my warranty period is coming to a close, I would be interested to hear from a genuine Oils expert as to the real differences between the various 2 stroke oils on the market.

What would happen if I put a less expensive 2 stroke oil into the Opti ??

Let me make it clear I hav'nt yet done such a thing, just interested to hear the various arguments as you have suggested.

Cheers
Craigie.

[FNQCairns]

Cragie probably no damage but only as long as the substitiuted TCW3 oil is Jasco FC rated (or better - FD) as that I think is what the mercury oil is.
The xd100 is FD rated I am sure so is top shelf and still is or originally was a torco TCW3 oil from memory.

Yamalube 2 (which is Citgo sea and snow 2 stroke oil) is fc rated so sit's pretty well in the middle for a tcw3 oil, any TCW3 with an FC rating is OK to use.

The TCW3 rating is almost bogus in extent, for example there are watercooled 2 stroke engines that will destruct if an FB or FC TCW3 is used but do OK with an oil FD rated. This is not because of anything truly special about these engines it's the degree of inherant lack of protection an oil that meets the TCW3 spec has.

When it is all broken down to the nitty gritty all that TCW3 stands for is biodegradable additives and anti plug fouling additives also mixable. I hate the stuff as it is allowed be very low in quality protection compared to other oils.

Dicko not to be smart alec but I think (not totally sure) that synthetic Valvoline is FB rated so is at or nearing the bottom of the TCW3 rating for overall wear protection/smoke/cokeing etc and that is pretty low for any 2 stroke oil (actually probably cannot get lower) regardless of application.
Give Valvoline a ring to see what the Jasco F? rating is, if it is of interest to you.

It's nice now the consumer has other tools based on science to make informed choices on their oils, 10 years ago the crappy TCW3 rating was all that was available to base a choice on and it was actually a no choice rating as the minimum wear/lubrication protection component of the rating is very easy to meet.

Anyway just how pathetic the TCW3 rating is, is a pet hate of mine as you may have been able to tell

cheers fnq

[Smithy]

OK here is the lowdown. We kept fuel reciepts for the 2 weeks on holiday. They totalled $912 with fuel at 118.9 so 767 litres reciepted for. Might have missed the first night I filled it up so another 150 litres so 917 litres total. The last day we didn't refill so maybe another 120 litres at the most as even though it was a short day it was a rough day. Total fuel consumed absolute maximum is 1037 litres. At 100/1 that does work out to 10 litres. No way in the world did we use anything approaching 10 litres. We were decanting the 20 litre tub into 4 litre bottles and putting a 4 litre one in every second day or so. Say we picked up the boat with 2 litres in the 10 litre reservoir, we put through the full 20 litres from the big tub and a litre left over from one of his 4 litre containers. Therefore we put in 21litres in two weeks and gave it back to him with maybe 1/2 a bottle worth in his big reservoir. Therefore the very least amount of oil we used for my holidays was say 17-18 litres. Best case scenario is then 1037 litres of petrol for 17 litres of oil used or 61:1.

Yes we did a lot of trolling but on a typical 130 litre day like we were doing 90-100 litres of the fuel consumption was from the running. The reason we used XD100 was it was a borrowed boat and that is what the owner said to use so we did. Maybe he needs to have it looked at if it is returning an oil consumption figure of 61:1. It was certainly smokey at times and left a oil smudge on the leg under one of the exhaust ports near the telltale. Have a look how smokey it was at times on this video or in the video section of Ausfish.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-XPWyL483To

Anyway this whole experience has turned me to 4 strokes even more than I was before.

[Dicko]

Anyway just how pathetic the TCW3 rating is, is a pet hate of mine as you may have been able to tell

cheers fnq

yo, it is of interest, as I like comparing apples & apples.

I didn't completelty know what the TCW3 cerfification meant before, so I've just quickly read through the TCW3 approval system & the test manual pdf files on here

http://www.nmma.org/certification/programs/oils/

It looks to be a comprehensive procedure in using various test bed engines, checking & measuring carbon residue deposits, lubricity, ring sticking, etc etc.

What do you see as actually wrong with it ?

I've also googled the Jasco rating system & can't find much. Where can I read more about it's testing methods and ratings procedure ?

[FNQCairns]

Hi Dicko the subject is huge will try not to overspeak, what is wrong with the TCW3 spec is lubricity, it's the fact that the minimum standard to pass this test portion is almost, or is artificially low.

History gives some answers as to why, years ago the outboard industry recognised to need for a new oil that was low in coke, helped with ring sticking, could be mixed with other products + other good traits for it's day - we then had tcw2.

Then the environment came into focus and the outboard industry decided we needed an oil standard that used none of the typical anti wear additves found in quality typical 2 stroke oils or many other land based oils so they subsituted biodegradable antiwear additives in place of the less biodegradable ones -TCW3.

The NMMA is a business they knew that if the TCW3 spec called for an oil that had the lubricity, wear protection abilities of typical quality landbased and aircooled 2 stroke oils they would be in a financial predicament as certification is bought originaly and maintained yearly by the particular oil brand with money. So the spec needed to be a LOW pass due to the cost and technology needed to create the biodegradable anti-wear additive packages.

So engine owners had no idea if the oil they bought was a just pass (and suitable for at best a watercooled lawnmower IMO) or anywhere above.

There is a need for a new TCW4 spec, the nmma has recoginised it and it is in the wind but the hurdles the nmma needs to get through are large as they run the risk of becoming to some degree a white elephant if the standard askes for a higher minimum level to pass.

One way to look at it I guess is imagine there was an industry min spec for a bottle of hot air and that was 20degC yet my application will be best protected with hot air at 35+degC. How do I know which brand of hot air is actually at 20 and which is at 35, each have the same spec! at least in theory with Jasco I can now ignore anything below 35deg as not in any way the best protection.

Here is a link to Jasco http://www.jalos.or.jp/ click on the first word 'jasco' from the bottom up on the left then click on 'english' then whichver you want (the pdf application lists are missing many certified oils, best to ring the marketer etc or google heaps), some with a 4 stroke O/B might be interested in the oil ratings here for gasoline engines.


Wish I had known a certain castrol oil was a low quality oil according to jasco years ago, might have saved the dirt bikes big end.

cheers fnq

[Dicko]

Arrh, the word is JASO, without the C

Intersting to read their 2 stroke list. I didn't see Valvoline on there (or many other US companies, they are mainly asian & european brands).

Maybe it's a case of JASO being the 'Japanese' Lubricating Oil Society and the TCW3 rating being from the NMMA which is the American, National Marine Manufacturers Association ?

It does make it difficult to compare apples & apples.

I'm happy to stick with what I'm using & what the dealer recomends to all his users, both private & commercial.

Funny thing while scouting around, I found these on the TLDI recomended list of oils on the US tohatsu site.

• Tohatsu Marine Premium Oil
• Nissan Marine Premium Oil
• Pennzoil Complete Marine Synthetic
• Pennzoil Semi-Synthetic Outboard Oil
• Mercury Optimax/DFI Oil
• Yamaha Yamalube 2-M Semi-Synthetic Injector Oil
• Bombardier RAM Ficht Oil

I wonder if you see Tohatsu oil listed as recomended on a Merc, Evinrude or Yamaha site ?

[FNQCairns]

Yeah sorry about that I have a habit of not double checking one day I will get the abreviation for heavy duty diesel oil correct, forever stuffing that one up.

That list is in no way comprehensive, reading between the lines it is not a compusory list and very possibly only the brands that consider it worth their while (nothing to hide) give the OK.

The penzoil marine synthetic is one of the best and at a reasonable price but BP (I think) bought them out with no plans to sell in OZ - shame.

Tohatsu does seem to profer good no b*****it advice.

With outboards my father bought a motor the same year I was born and ran it exculisivly on motor oil for the next 20 years, never measured just poured, it did many many hours in that time without fault.
So the range is wide but if the dung hit's the fan its nice to know there is an oil running that has the ability to save or limit an expensive rebuild. That's the attraction of jasco *edit JASO to me.

cheersfnq

[STUIE63]

Take the etec in to the dealer and get it checked . I wonder if it is set for the 50 oil and not the 100 . That is alot of oil it's using .
Stuie

[Cloud_9]

Craigie. my 90 2 stroke merc got 2.2 klm per L at 4000rpm and 3.3 at 5600rpm.
I just bought a 115 Evanrude Direct Injection 2 Stroke. can't wait to see the fuel figures. 5.5M C/Console.the D I is the modle just beforethe ETec's arrived.
its pretty hard to compair a 200 to a 225. the power to weight ratio will it might seem small but could be significant.
Cheers Cloud 9