Submerged Outboard Questions

[USMC22]

Considering buying a Mercury 8hp 4stroke outboard that took a dunk in salt water. Price just seems too good to pass on.

 

motor was not running (per seller) at the time of the dunk (at a dock) where it was recovered immediately (on August 26th). It was salt water.

 

looking at specs it doesn’t seem to be electric heavy. 

 

Im thinking flush it out, drain replace all fluids and go from there?

 

$250 is the asking price. Sounds like they wrote it off with insurance. Motor is 2018.

[TOXIC]

You would think that even if you couldn't get it running, you could part it out at that price.  

[USMC22]

3 minutes ago, TOXIC said:

You would think that even if you couldn't get it running, you could part it out at that price.  

That’s kind of my last resort thinking 

[Way2slow]

If it was not pulled out, drained/flushed, oil changed etc, and started immediately, it's probably only worth scrap value. It only takes a small amount of rust on machined wear surfaces to make the motor need a total rebuild and a new crank and rods if it got to them, and that's not cheap, actually, it more expensive than the motor would be worth.

Any time a motor is submerged, it needs oil drained and changed if four stroke, the spark plugs pulled out, the motor cranked over a number of times to purge any water out of cylinders immediately, not several hours or days later.  Then it needs to be started and run at fast idle, no more than 2K rpm, until it comes up to operating temp and then another 15 or 20 minutes at least.