Evinrude Fitch (225)

[Jimbob]

Hi all, hope you are all well,

my question is simple really, are these engines good engines. As i have spotted a boat (scorpion) with one on that takes my fancy.


P.S thansk for all the help so far, a really great bunch of people

[bogib]

One thing you need to bear in mind if the engine is older than two years you need to have it confirmed that the FICHT system has been upgrated as intructed by Bombardier in 2002 I think. These are good engines and I sold number of them over here in the past and they performed brilliantly.

Bogi

[gavin]

Early models of Ficht suffered with sooting of plugs, OMC requested spark plugs should be indexed ie open j end of plug should face the individual injector and the later models were fitted with a small allen head deflector pin recessed beside each plug, this had the effect of spreading the fuel mist and plugs burnt the mixture more efficiently, and didnt soot up, the upgraged models have a visible allen head recessed beside the plug, these models are called Ficht Ram, rather than Ficht, it would be a good idea to have a technician plug into the motor via laptop, suggesting he looks at stored fault codes, max temps, eng hours max rpm, and any stored service logs, and codes.2001 on as far as I know are all the later models, the year is marked on a silverised plate on the cowling below the motor hood where it goes towards the lower unit.Fichts are remarkably fuel efficient, find out if you can locally purchase the recommended xd50 oil, as this must be used, great engines, a 225 and 250 were used on the round Ireland, do a search on www.boatsetup.com on the motor or hp you are looking at cheers

[Fjordrafting]

Hi, Jimbob! I have two 2004 250hp Evinrude DI (they changed names from FICHT to DI this year). The things i brake on these mashines are:
1) Since I have two engines, one is counterrotating, and it is a weaker lower unit, so i have broken one after only three months. I have waited one month for a new part on warrenty, but is still has not come. Had to by one myself for 2000 pund in order to be able to be up and running.
2) The tilt-tubs (2 on each engine) wear out quickly, every 40 hours. It is a thin plastic thing, I grase it through the nipple for every trip.
3) The rubber on the enginemounting has wore out on both engines.
4) The tiltingmecanime has lost a part.
5) The tiltingbars are hitting one roll each when tilting. These rolls are bolted to the engine. It has broken on eeach engine.
6) The manual says that you can do 100 hours on the sparkplugs, not. After 70 you have big problems starting the engines. i do not run the engines at low speed for a long period of time.
7) The manual recomends 100 hours interval between change of oil on lower unit, this is gambling since the oil smells badly after 100 hours. (bad smell is a bad sign).

The engines have run 240 hours each.


Best regards
Martin

[searafting.no]

Hi Jimbob,

we have 2 2003 Ficht 225 engines one your Revenger 29, and we have allmost the same problems that fjordrafting have, we have changed tilt tube bushing 3 times on one of the engines, but it's strange because it happends only on the engine that have the steering cylinder, spark plugs have to be changed every 60-70 hour and we run ficht oil, one of the engines hade a total brake down only after 12 hours, burnt piston, broken crank pin and a big hole in the block! a big fight about warranty and 2 months without engine was the result. we allso have broken and lost bolts on the engine mounts, rubber engine mount have worn out one one of the engines.

the engines have only 170 hours on them, and we have hade a lot of fault codes that you need to go to a dealer to clear, but we have your own ficht software and cabel to clear the codes.

Oil pressure switch hade to be changed on on of the engines only after 100 hour.

we allso broke one cranck shaft position sensor, the bracket that holds the CSP sensor broke and the sensor touched the flywheel, the 90 deggree bracket that holds the sensor should have a extra bracket so it then looks like a triangel, this is a update from bombardier.


The engines run great, and we ride very hard.