Re: Omc vs mercury parts

[billw]

The other thing about Mercury parts is that up until the eighties, they were constantly "improving" their lineup. Sometimes it was an actual improvement. Other times, it was a change that didn’t amount to a hill of beans, in my opinion. So, up until the eighties, there was not a lot of predictable changeability between motors and parts. Like an early 1967 20 hp prop shaft may or may not, be the same as a 1966 or even a late 1967. So finding the right part for a particular engine, and stocking the right parts for all the different variations was, and still is, a nightmare. In the late seventies and eighties, Mercury settled in on designs that worked and had a lot more commonality of parts. By then, they also had stainless steel shafts. So all they had to do was wait for OMC to implode, to basically trip over its own feet, which it did. Plus, I totally agree about the fact that there were just SO many more OMCs out there….

Long live American manufacturing!