The Problem with Stern Drives Boats (MerCruiser, Volvo, OMC)

⚓FREE for Boat Shoppers:
28-page resource for new & used boat shoppers to assist in the boat research & shopping process.

🚤FREE for Boat Owners:
For newer boat owners gives you the insights on boat ownership basics, navigation and practical rules of the water and how to avoid, be prepared and handle emergency situations. No more not knowing what you don't know in the boating lifestyle.

🛥️AVOID Docking Stress!
If you are not 100% confident in your boat handling skills, get nervous docking, avoid fun situations because you’re not sure you can do it, stress over docking and can’t get your anchor to stick, this program is an absolute must for you

😊BUY with Confidence!
Overwhelmed, confused and frustrated with everything involved in buying a new or used boat? If so, the First-Time Boat Buyer’s Academy will help you find the perfect new or used boat at the absolute best price so you can buy it with 100% confidence and have years of happy boating memories.

Discover The Problem with Stern Drives Boats (MerCruiser, Volvo, OMC) & more at Boat Buyer’s Secret Weapon.

⚓⚓RESOURCES FOR SMART NEW & USED BOAT SHOPPERS:⚓⚓

🛥️🛥️🛥️ PLAYLIST FOR BOAT SHOPPERS & OWNERS 🛥️🛥️🛥️

🚤🚤🚤🚤🚤 MUST HAVE BOATING TOYS & GEAR 🚤🚤🚤🚤🚤

👍👍👍These products proudly come from my personal Boating Ship store and shipped from the good ole US of A! (NO Cheap Chinese Crap) 👍👍👍

This information is provided for entertainment & isn’t legal, tax advice. You are responsible for applying in a safe & practical manner for your specific situation!

Your friend in boating,
Captain Matt

[mikeperry]

My 24 year old Mercruiser has been fantastic. 4.3lt v6. Only fresh water. It still runs like the day I bought itm

[chrisdoppel]

I love my sterndrive in the Great Lakes! Nothing better than hanging out at the swim platform!!

[SC-yxwr]

Great vid! I have had three Mercruisers, and they do have a lot more annual maintenance. In particular the drive shaft u-joints that need servicing and the drive itself needing periodic alignments. Also, if the bellows leak, your boat will sink at the dock. Fire and fuel leak explosions are a problem for stern drives requiring engine compartment vent blowers and auto fire extinguisher systems, not a problem for outboards. Other issue is stern drives use marinized automotive engines, and problems arise since they are not dedicated marine designs like ouboards. For example '90's era Mercruisers had a very bad design adaptation of the automotive mechanical fuel pump being used for the marine engine in a belt driven combination fuel-water pump. These are prone to sudden failure when the shaft seizes causing engine to die.

Among the benefits to the sterndrives is that the engines being heavy duty automotive or truck derivatives, are quite simple in comparison to outboards, extremely reliable and robust, easy to work on, and parts are common and inexpensive compared to outboards. Also, nothing like the added stability the weight of a big block 454 cubic inch motor provides when mounted low and along the keel of a deep vee boat.

[TheStephenspann]

Something else worth mentioning when comparing outboard and sterndrive power numbers is torque. The power to weight ratio may be better when looking at the HP figure, but the big V8 sterndrives, especially the big blocks produce a ton of torque, which more than makes up for the added weight. Another thing is the noise... I have a cobalt, and maybe that's the reason, but I can't hear my sterndrive at all, especially at idle. I've gotten compliments about how quiet it is, so it can come down to the quality of the engine cover.

[brycekrulic]

Hi Matt, I would add that the other great equalizer between the two types is being trailer-bound. If your boat is on the trailer 20 times longer than in the water on average, then either power package is good. Face it...it's an automotive derived engine, so it does the best out of the water. I would also add that @ 300 HP or more, sterndrive initial cost investment is always better. All I see is $100/HP on most all outboards, especially above 250 HP. Sterndrive doesn't cost this much with engine + drive. And then you can easily budget for replacing either large component, if necessary. Large outboards cost way higher in upper/lower components or as a whole. And then sterndrive is just as easy to maintain as outboard when trailer-bound, as mentioned above. Also, don't forget that in many states, you have to register each outboard as if it's a separate boat at an uncapped excise tax. Sterndrive and motor is not taxed nor separately registered...just the boat as a whole.

[collinparsons]

At the start of the chart shown in the 90s, it's important to consider what outboards were back then. They were all two-stroke, meaning you had to mix gas and oil, and they were also loud, smoky, and not very powerful. You needed a stern drive to get respectable power on a recreational boat. Four-stroke outboards are none of the things that two-strokes were, are just as powerful as stern drives, and easier to maintain. It seems like nowadays, the main reasons to buy a stern drive are the large swim platform and cleaner look. I've also heard that stern drives tend to be more fuel efficient than outboards of the same horsepower, but then again, I've also heard the opposite.

[crack_of_dawn]

We are buying a lake house in SC with a dock and a boat lift and were really intent on buying an I/O motored bowrider but as we've been researching boats for the last couple months we've flipped and now we only want to buy an outboard boat, for the sole reason that we would like to be able to get a lot of use out of the boat over the winter when the weather gets nice occasionally and having the outboard makes that significantly easier as we can just leave the boat at the dock on the lift and tilt the motor a few times to get the water out then come back and use it whenever we want.

[JVRottweil]

I had and have both. Most sterndrives are jam packed in the hull making many a real pain to work on for both the DIY and Pro. Raising costs of repair for a pro to do it and enough of a pain to make some people ignore some maintenance. Even mine that is super easy to get to. You still have to pull the out drive and replace the bellows, realign the engine, grease or replace the gimbal bearing. Pulling the outdrive off is something may DIYers wont want to do. My outboards maintenance is so much easier to work on than even my roomy engine compartmented Sterndrive, its not even comparable. Ease and cost of maintenance for an outboard is light years better than even the most friendly stern drive set ups

[wherethewaterflows]

I just had to re power my Bayliner 2455 Since its a project boat I looked at maybe an outboard. New Yamaha 300hp $28, 000. I bought a re-manufactured long block from Michigan Motors with new risers and a brand new SEI sterndrive and it ran me about $6500 that is a huge difference.

[yoster]

I'm freshwater only, and I'll take a sterndrive every single time. The only exception is my fishing boat. But for family fun, I just love sterndrives.

[parkerjon]

Appreciate your videos. I don’t have a boat, but I want to start boating… I’m trying to do a lot of long term education and learning before jumping in and this helps a lot!

[scottbryant]

Having owned both, Im going to say this. Yes stern drives are more work keeping them healthy. Most people don't like to put work into a boat. I always say for every hour on the water, plan on 15 mins of maintaining it. Wax, gear lube, trim lube, flushing, wax, buff, oil changes, blah blah...
Outboards are getting better, but they break and when they do, the repairs can be crazy expensive. They corrode, they blow pistons, exhaust mid sections, etc. A new 200hp outboard from Yam, Honda, zuk, all 20k give or take. A 5.7 efi merc i/o that puts out 300hp is around 13k in the boat, it's more power, torque, I think quieter, and many of us can do a lot of the annual maintaining.

Both have plusses and minuses, it comes down to finding a boat that you like with one or the other. Runabouts on the used market are generally alot less money than a dual console of similar size. Center consoles with stern drives are very nice in the water, wouldn't keep in salt but if your trailer, that weight is really a bonus in the 3 footers.

It's cheaper for boat makers to set up an outboard boat than a stern drive boat and that is really why they're more common. It's just much simpler at the factory and thus why they lost popularity.

[bourquebuiltful]

I love my stern drive with extended swim platform. I keep it in a fresh water river, only 24 miles to long Island sound.

[marior]

Thanks for the video I learned allot about stern drives in the last couple years and this video is so well explained

[davidfrank]

You are not kidding about the intake manifolds on a inboard outboard. When we bought our first boat it was at the end of the summer at the Annapolis boat show. We wanted to buy a brand new boat but the salesman talked us out of it and told us about a used one that they had that was a fantastic deal. We looked at it it took perfectly fine went out test road for about an hour came back and signed the papers. Since winter was coming we only got to take it out a few times before needing to winterize it.

The following year that March was extremely nice weather so we were excited to take our boat out again. After about 45 minutes our boat started feeling with smoke and I could see it was coming from the engine compartment. Even before I could stop the engine they shut off by theirselves. I had my wife and our kids run to the bow of the boat as I grabbed the fire extinguisher and was slowly opening the hatch. All I could see was black smoke and no flames. I still at that time wasn't sure what was wrong and I was not going to try to mess with it as we were sitting in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay with no engines. Fortunately another boat saw us and towed us back to our boat dock. That's when I saw it was the rubber boots holding the exhaust system together that had heated up and started smoking. Made sure to get the boat out of the water I did some reading and just ordered the rubber parts. The next time we went out it was my wife and myself and the same exact thing happened again. That's when I talked to a professional boat mechanic at the marina. He explained to me about the exhaust manifolds. He wanted over $4, 000 to fix the boat and there was no way I was spending that kind of money on something that I've only used three times. The dealership wouldn't do nothing with us as far as cutting a break on labor or parts told us straight up that you bought it it's yours Good luck. Side note two years later that dealership went out of business across Maryland.

After ordering all the parts and going ahead and replacing a lot of other things I was lucky and did not even break $800 by shopping around on the internet. By a following weekend our boat was running normal.

In researching the problems with the exhaust manifolds That's when I discovered there is no way to tell how far gone they are unless you take them apart and physically look inside. I know today it's a little easier since we have cameras that can go into those areas. Back then if you wanted a camera like that it was going to cost you a couple thousand dollars. After that bad experience we never bought another used boat again and we never bought inboard outboard motors again. Everything we own after that has all been in boards and never had any big issue whatsoever.

Great video I'm glad to see someone putting out good information so someone looking to buy their first boat does not have to go through what we did.

One other side note. After the first time we had the problem my wife could not stop bragging to anyone who would listen to her about how I handled the emergency on the boat. The one thing we always did was our kids had to keep their life preservered on when we were traveling unless they went down into the cabin. And the adults had to keep their life jackets somewhere where they could grab them quickly if needed. If this would have been a more major issue at least my family would have been safe. I hope no one ever has to go through something like that it really changed the way we did things.

[micuraPR]

Can’t beat a clean transom with a platform for looks, fishability, and diving, and the efficiency of a Volvo diesel. Noisy? Maybe, but so is a Viking 70.

[joesilverbliss]

Good video. I have a 2005 5.0L bravo 3. In fresh water now. I was wondering about the trade off between I/O and outboards. You crystalized my thoughts and got it exactly right. Major repairs on an IO are a pain. I had to take the heads off. Lots of cursing and dropping things. The only plus is the engine is familiar basically a 1999 GM vortec. The back deck access is definitely the good thing, I have a Searay Sundeck 220. If I get another boat I am leaning towards an outboard even so. Thanks again for the video. Joe

[TheStephenspann]

Ok last comment. Safety is another thing to consider, with jet boats being the safest. It's not terribly uncommon for an outboard to flip up into an boat after striking an underwater object and severely injure passengers with the propeller, or just the fact that they are being struck with a huge outboard. It seems to be most common in bass boats, but I'm sure it happens in center consoles as well. If you were to hit something hard enough with a stern drive, it might rip out of the back of the transom and sink the boat... which is not great either.

[davidhall]

been running a BIIIX behind a yanmar 6LPA 315hp turbo diesel. new in 2004, replaced the drive in 2015 with B3XR due to catastrophic failure caused by my lack of proper maintenence for 11yrs and being 24/7 in salt water. (I did replace zincs every 3 months. ) did not keep up with regular gear oil changes. new drive has been on now for 6yrs and I do keep up with all maintenence and even had my merc dealer go through it just to clean and keep an eye on things. he found a bad upper unit bearing that needed replacement. and a mass of muscles growing in the cooling towers.
truthfully I wish I had a V drive instead of a sterndrive, but I love the boat and learned to live with the constant maintenence program.

[dell]

I really hate it when people that obviously are not boat mechanics lead people in the wrong direction. Truth is outboards will corrode from the salt water just as bad as a stern drive. Truth of the matter is if the owner of a stern drive is maintaining things as he should it will last just as long as the outboard. This guy is failing to let you know All the issues with outboards. Trim seals and trim units fail All the time. Steering swivel / mid sections fail all the time due to owner not maintaining. Major services on a outboard are almost double in cost compared to a stern drive ( if the outboard service is being done correctly and according to factory specifications) . I own a boat repair shop been in the business for over 30yrs I too lean more towards the Newer 4stroke outboards especially Suzuki from 2016 to now. But I can tell you that they both have there issues and both have there If you're the type person that doesn't maintain your stuff as it should be done Yes you will have a 4stroke outboard give you less trouble But when they fail it's not a thousand dollar fix it's several thousand if not a new one for tens of