1993 Mercury 40 hp elpto

Looking to buy a 1993 merc. 40 hp elpto tiller motor, and have seen a lot of bad reviews about carb issues, starting-flooding issues and starter motor trim unit issues.

Does anyone here have any long term use with one of these motors and if so what if any problems have you experienced?

Thanks in advance!
Firefly

Used to work on them until 1997 when we got out of the Merc business, thank goodness. The only downside is that since we got out of the Merc stuff and into Yamaha, honestly we don't make much on the outboard end of the service business. Kinda like the maytag repairman.

The 40ELPTO...IIRC was 4 cylinder 2 carb. As long as the linkages are set right, timing adjusted properly and everything synchronized (link & sync), they're not too bad. PT&T motors have been known to be problematic, just like many other mercs. About the only thing we never really had to mess with was the lower unit.

Also keep in mind that fuel plays a huge role, specifically the change in fuel formulation over the last ~10 years. They weren't designed to run E-10 in the early '90's and definitely werent designed for oxygenated fuel-which is what we have now-and goes sour in a couple weeks.

I always liked the sound of the inline 4 2 stroke, not as nice as the inline 6 but they didn't sound bad

The 50 is out of my league.....I quit messing with black motors in 1997, when the switch was made to Yamaha.

Shoulda kept the black ones. We never see the Yammies again once they've been sold. At least with Merc, we had plenty of work to do.

Like any motor, I like to have a look-see under the cowling. If I see dirt dobber nests, debris, leaves, wasps, scorpions (yeah...I pulled the top from a Yamaha C40 twin last week to find a couple scorpions hiding in there), knowing that boat motors dont' have air filters, I typically will run away-and fast and not ask a single other question. Usually that means that the engine has at one time ingested some dirt/debris/etc and it might last 10 minutes, or it might last 10 hours. But when one's clean under there, it was well taken care of and those are the ones I'm more interested in.

Not uncommon for Merc PT&T motors to fail, though the newer ones seem better than the older ones. Beyond that, I can't think of anything in particular that was problematic-but remember, I quit messing with Merc's 10 years prior to the one you're interested in.

The fact that the seller will let you water test it is a good sign usually. Means he's at least confident that it won't be a problem child.

That said, I had a 90 for a while (big block 3 cylinder) that was an excellent motor. Just didn't use it all that much, so I sold it to a guy I work with who had nothing but problems with it from the day he got it. PT&T motor died first. Then the switchbox. Then the harness came apart (insulation flaking). Then the stator AND pickup. Then constantly fiddling with all 3 carburetors. Perhaps the motor just didn't like him or something-I don't know. I did all the work, he bought the parts...which wasn't a big deal really other than a lot of my free time went into fixing that piece of steaming feces. He sold it to some guy that drove nearly 1500 miles to pick it up. Good thing, hopefully I'll never see it again.