Installing new Yamaha T9.9 engines

About a week out of Pensacola the port engine developed a hiccup that wouldn't go away... it would run at full throttle, then one cylinder would mysteriously die. Our starboard 9.9 was a 2004 model with over 1,200 hours on it, and the lower unit was from a 2003 motor. The port motor came from Ed Ellis in Soldier Creek, a 2003 that we fixed up with parts from our other 04 model, and it had an unknown number of hours on it.

Since we had basically no confidence in either 9.9, the decision was made to get new outboards. Best prices on the west coast of FL are at Ingman Marine in Port Charlotte. We purchased 2 Yamaha T9.9 GPXR outboards. The new models come with power tilt, which is nice, but they are designed to be steered off a bigger outboard, so they don't have a friction lock. We don't want our engines to turn at all, so we had to figure out a way to keep them fixed. The 14-piece Yamaha part kits that comprise the friction lock lever was only available in Japan or California, and we didn't want to spend more $ and wait a week to get them. The solution would have been easy if we had 1/4" thick, 2.5" angled alumium... but we only had some 1.5" stock, so it took a little cockpit engineering to get everything lined up. At the end of the day, we fabricated and installed the pieces on both motors, and they cannot turn.

The new R models have a 10-pin wiring harness instead of the old 7-pin (extra wires are for remote power tilt switches), so we had to purchase new wiring harnesses. We also got new Yamaha control cables, a pair of 10' and a pair of 14 footers. Since we don't have a Yamaha binnacle, we also had to get 7-pin pigtail adapters to wire into the old neutral safety/tachs/hour meters/key switches.

Once everything was installed, the throttle cables were 2" out of alignment... hmmm... after much headscratching, I finally figured out that the 2004 engines had a pull-pull throttle/shift cable arrangment, while the 2008s have a push-pull setup, so the throttle cam in the Morse/Teleflex binnacle had to be turned 180 degrees. Once that was done, the engines actually work as designed! The power tilt bracket is much longer than the old manual tilt model, and it hangs down below the nacelle, almost into the water.... so the next time we have access to the bottom side of the bridgedeck, we'll have to fabricate new nacelles to keep debris and water off the bottom of the bracket.