E-TEC at 10 Years – Part 2 – Reliability

This s part 2 in a multi-part series covering our long-term experience with an Evinrude E-TEC 90 outboard.

In our previous post, we summarized our experiences with E-TEC performance and fuel economy. In this post, we discuss our experiences with the E_TEC 90’s reliability, durability, and serviceability. Upcoming  posts will discuss eco-impacts and total operating costs.

But first, let’s explain what we mean when we talk about:

• Reliability – Can we depend on the motor to start and run within specs?
• Durability – How long will the engine last?
• Serviceability – How easy is it to maintain the motor?

E-TEC Reliability:

When we purchased our E-TEC 10 years ago, this was our single biggest concern. Evinrude’s parent corporation, OMC, had gone bankrupt, arguably due to problems with their Ficht fuel injection technology. Their sudden departure left a lot of customers and dealers in the lurch, and Evinrude’s new owner, Canadian-based Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) was a relative unknown to the US boating market.

BRP took a big chance, and decided to go all-in with a redesign of the failed Ficht system. They used advanced electronics and space-age materials to develop an advanced 2-stroke engine which purportedly had all the benefits of 2-strokes (light weight, more torque, fewer moving parts), while providing the same or better performance in areas where 4-strokes have typically excelled (fuel economy, pollution control, and noise). And they also injected a major game-changer by offering unheard-off things like 3-year service intervals, 3 year (or longer) warranties, and no break-in period.

All good stuff, BUT for a marketplace made wary by OMC’s unseemly exit, potential customers were skeptical, to say the least. Add in Internet haters and BRP’s brash marketing challenges to stalwarts Mercury Marine and Yamaha Marine, and the new E-TECs were immediately caught up in a miasma of negative rumors, half-truths, and extrapolations of impending disaster.

The FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) surrounding E-TEC was the basis for our initial article: “What’s Up with E-TEC?”, which appeared in 2004. [Editor’s note: We will probably resurrect this article from the OSJ archives in the near future]. Since we were looking at a repower on Toy Boat 2 at the time, it seemed like bolting on an E-TEC would be a logical choice for a long-term usage report.

So after ten years years, what’s our assessment?

Let’s separate out emotion from objective observation. If we step back and take an objective look at the motor’s history, reliability has been very, very good. Not great, but very, very good.

For the most part, the engine has always started reliably, and runs like a clock.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve only had two problems that can be attributed to manufacturing or design issues:

• One fuel injector failed under warranty. The engine continue to start and run, but roughly. Replacing the injector solved the problem, and it has not reoccurred.
• We have an ongoing (unsolved) software glitch which triggers a false “Low Oil” alarm under certain rough-water operating conditions (more on this later).

That actually sounds great for a 10 year-old motor, so why the slightly lower rating? The answer is that in the list above, we have included only those problems we know for sure were not induced by installer or operator error.

We have actually had a number of other issues with the reliability of the motor, but right now we’re pretty sure they were caused by human error (either us, or something the installer did). It didn’t seem fair to chalk those up as black marks against the motor, but they did have an impact on our confidence in the E-TEC at the time.

Once we resolved the issues, things were great. But then again, sometimes you wonder…

Following are more details on what happened:

My Fuelish Ways

When we first got the motor, it ran just fine. The third and fourth times out, it was a little hard to start. By the fifth trip out, the engine died after leaving the dock, and could not be restarted. The engine turned over, there appeared to be spark, but that was it.

“Uh oh,” we thought, “is this the ghost of Ficht?” As it turns out, the answer was a definite “NO”.

The root cause of the problem was salt water in the fuel tank (remember, this was a repower). Enough to fill the water separator filter and enter the motor’s fuel pump.

With the water separator filter full of salt water, it took just a few trips before the salt water rusted the fuel pump to the point that it would not work. However, when the technician checked the log kept by the motor’s computer, it said “Low engine voltage” (as opposed to something like “No fuel flow”).

This led the mechanic to blame the boat’s electrical system (more specifically, all the electronics we had installed). This, in turn, led to replacement of several major electrical components in the engine before the fuel pump issue was found by accident. The boat was down for weeks as the technician continued to “shotgun” the repair by replacing parts, some of which were not in stock.

In looking back, the “Low engine voltage” message was probably caused by the rusted pump trying to get enough juice to start spinning. In a DC electrical system, when you have a motor that is stuck like this, it draws a large amount of current trying to turn over. This leads to a low voltage condition on the circuit leading to the motor, which caused the misleading log entry.

Since the E-TECs were pretty new at the time (ours is a 2005), no one had a lot of experience troubleshooting the motor. It was a logical assumption that an electrical system message must be tied to the engine electronics, although it turned out to be wrong.

Could this problem have been avoided? ABSOLUTELY.

When repowering a boat (especially one that has been used in salt water), the installer is supposed to inspect and clear the fuel tank of water, and replace the water separator filter  before hooking up the motor. In our case, the technician apparently only did a cursory visual inspection of the tank, and did not replace the filter.

After the fuel pump was replaced, we had the fuel polished (this involves cleaning the tank, removing any water and crud, and refilling with dry fuel ). The results? Almost a gallon of water and debris.

The good news? BRP covered everything to fix the system, except for polishing the fuel, which I would have had to pay for anyway. Problem solved, and clearly this was not anything related directly to the motor. And it said a lot of positive things about BRP’s customer service.

The Phantom Low Oil Alarm

The next problem is something that we are still dealing with. Over the years, we’ve run the boat in some pretty brutal conditions – for example: 5 – 8ft short period mixed direction swells, and small craft advisories (not intentionally, of course). Under certain rough water conditions, the “Low Oil” engine alarm is triggered.

The alarm takes the form of a loud, piercing tone, and a dash light.  At first we thought it was related to the boat coming off a big swell in “free fall” and hitting the bottom of the trough. Since the oil level indicator uses a small float inside the tank, if you hit the bottom of a trough hard enough, the float might submerge a little too much, triggering the alarm.

A interesting theory, but as we were to discover, wrong. The alarm would sound under all sorts of conditions. Always while running in rough water, but never in any kind of repeatable pattern. Sometimes it would happen after a hard impact, sometimes when “floating” off the top of a swell. Sometimes it would happen while running in flat water shortly after going through a patch of rough stuff.

When it first started happening, it seemed like the only way to reset the alarm was to turn off the engine. When you’re 30 miles offshore, that can make for a long trip back.

We brought the boat in for service, with no luck. They couldn’t reproduce the problem. However, after an engine software update, the alarm seemed to be happening less often, and the low oil alarm would silence itself after 10 seconds. That tells us that someone knew about the problem, and was trying to fix it.

We found the situation annoying, but tolerable. Our approach to dealing with the problem: keep the oil tank filled, and drive through the alarm. If it doesn’t turn off in 10 seconds, stop the boat and check the oil.

Since software updates are a part of routine service, we’re hopeful that the problem will go away after the next scheduled maintenance [Editor’s note: OK, so this is a situation where a 3 year service window is not an advantage…].

Sorry, This Does Not Compute

Somewhere around year 4, we had a disturbing incident. About 15 miles offshore, we stopped on a kelp paddy, and shut the motor off. After fishing the paddy, we tried to start the engine, and the battery was dead.

Hmmm…switched to the spare battery, started the motor, then ran back to port. After the run in, the battery was still dead. At home, the battery could be recharged, and a battery tester confirmed the battery was fine.

The conclusion – no current was being sent to the battery. A clamp-on ammeter confirmed it. There was no output current to the battery while the engine was running.

On an automobile, this would most likely be a faulty or poorly grounded voltage regulator. On a high-tech outboard? We had no clue…

Another trip to the mechanic unearthed the cause – a faulty EMM (Engine Management Module). Unfortunately, this problem was not covered under the 3-year warranty. The cost to repair: $1,500.

Yikes! We only paid $7,500 for the motor in the first place. Well…it had to be done, although the $1,500 replacement cost put a big dent in the savings we were seeing from the 3-year service interval.

We asked the mechanic, “What could we have done to avoid the problem?” He wasn’t sure, so he went back to BRP, and the feedback was that it was probably a problem with overheating. What?? We had only had the engine temperature alarm go off twice, and in both cases we cleared the water intake obstruction immediately. Clearly that could not be the cause.

Our suspicion? The internal low voltage condition from the rusted fuel pump problem. Low voltage conditions can damage computers just as seriously as high voltages, but in some cases, the problem might not manifest itself for some time.

We contacted BRP Customer Service to see if any type of engineering post-mortem had occurred, given that a consumer’s expectation would be that something as expensive as the EMM should last the lifetime of the engine.

Their response was that damaged EMMs from engines that are out of warranty are not subject to any kind of analysis. They just go into the trash heap after the memory contents are copied to the replacement EMM. So I guess we’ll never know.

E-TEC Durability:

What can we say? After 10 years, it’s still running, and running well. We seem to have gotten through the one-off issues, and the engine pretty much performs as advertised. And note – we have been following Evinrude’s recommendations for no break-in period, and 300 hour or 3 year service. Predictions of doom did not prove to be the case.

Again, this is not to say the engine has been perfect. Here are a couple of minor things that have come up:

The Oil Tank Leak

Around year 7 we noticed some oil dripping out of some of the exhaust ports on the lower unit. Hmmm…perhaps we spilled some oil when refiling the tank? We popped the cowling and checked. Yes…a little oil on the side of the tank. We wiped it off, and everything seemed cool.

A few weeks later, we noticed the problem again. Another check – the oil tank was lower than last time, but no sign of oil dripping. We added some oil to top off the tank, wiped everything off, and since we couldn’t see a leak, we buttoned things back up again.

This went on for several months. We finally got on line with our favorite E-TEC motor site, (The E-TEC owner’s group forums) and found that the problem was probably due to a pinhole leak in one of the oil tank seams.

The tank is apparently built in two pieces, which are ultrasonically welded together. Under certain conditions, excess pressure can build up, causing the tank to spring a leak somewhere on the seam.

In our case, it was probably caused by over-filling the oil tank. When the tank is filled to normal level, there is a small air space at the top. When the engine gets hot, the oil in the tank expands slightly.

Normally, the void space in the tank is sufficient to allow the expansion to occur without damaging the tank. However, if the tank is over-filled, higher-than-expected internal pressures are created, and over time, can cause the seams to develop small leaks.

Our paranoia about running out of oil on the water was the likely culprit. At the end of every trip we would completely top off the oil tank so that we would be ready for the next trip. After 7 years of this stress, a pinhole leak appeared in a hard-to see location (underneath an inside mounting tab on the tank).

Once the leak started, enough oil would drip out so that a partial vacuum in the tank would occur. This created enough back-pressure to keep more oil from leaking out, until some other situation occurred which relieved the internal vacuum.

So by the time we noticed oil on the lower unit, the leak had actually stopped. Since the leak was in a hard-to-spot location, when we opened the cowling, we would see nothing. But…a hot day in the garage, opening the tank to refill it, or a drop in outside air pressure due to an approaching storm front would cause the oil leak to start up again.

We replaced the oil tank, stopped filling the tank to the very top, and the problem has not happened again.

However, another issue turned up while we were fixing the oil tank. In order to replace the oil tank, you have to open up the mid-section covers to expose the bolts holding down the lower end of the oil tank. Imagine our surprise when we saw this:

After flaking off some of the peeling paint, some gentle tapping with a screwdriver handle seemed to indicate the metal was still pretty solid. Subsequent conversations with our mechanic indicated this is a normal situation…but it’s definitely disturbing if you aren’t expecting it! I guess the plastic mid-section covers served a purpose after all…

Got to Remember Not to Hurt Myself…

OK, we admit it – we did manage to break off the engine skeg, not once, but twice. Both times involved pulling the boat out of the driveway without tilting the motor up!

It looks like the aluminum casting for the E-TEC 90’s skeg is a more brittle alloy than that used in our old Johnson 90. We did the same thing to the old Johnson, but the Johnson’s skeg used to bend rather than snap off.

Clamping a 2×4 to the Johnson’s skeg allowed us to straighten it out pretty easily. But not so on the E-TEC. That may be by design, in order to avoid damage to the lower unit if the skeg hits an underwater obstruction.

E-TEC Serviceability:

We’ve been following the owners manual pretty much down the wire, and everything seems to be working out as advertised. It is interesting to see that laptop computers are now standard equipment for servicing outboard motors, just like cars. You can still do the basics like changing plugs, and replacing the water pump, thermostat and lower unit oil, but much of the remaining diagnostic and tuning effort requires a computer, the right software  and an appropriate connector harness.

The E-TECs are probably more easily serviced than a 4-stroke because they do not have a valve system which has to be inspected and adjusted from time to time, and they do not have a timing belt which has to be replaced periodically.

If we were to make any recommendation, it would be to make sure you find a good mechanic, and stay with him. But that applies to just about any outboard brand.

The Bottom Line:

The E-TEC 90 has turned out to be a solid motor. The only unresolved issue  is the false “Low Oil” alarm, which we can live with, and will hopefully be resolved in some future software update.

NEXT UP: Pollution concerns