Hi Sharpey
Interesting to hear that the majority of your VRod's work was done at trolling speeds.
It made me wonder about a phenomenon I heard about referred to in relation to 4 strokes as ''making oil". As I understand it, in lay terms this happens when 4 stokes are run in from new too gently, as can often happen with engines used mostly for trolling. This results in the rings not bedding in correctly and, when the engine is subsequently run for long periods at slow trolling sppeds, unburnt fuel bypasses the rings and gets into the oil, thus diluting it and reducing its effectiveness. It shows up as excessive oil levels on the dipstick and in extreme cases can even overflow from the dipstick etc.
In the Verado this over-level fuel/oil mix can then get up into the supercharger, and in the right set of circumstamces, bang! Much the same thing can happen (according to the VRod forums in the US) simpoly thru over-filling the engine with oil.
Even in non-supercharged engines this can also do quite bad damage as you can imagine. I have a mate who runs a Yammy dealership and he told me about a customer who used his Yammy 60 4st predominantly to troll on dams who had complained about oil flowing out of the dipstick. "Making oil was id'd as the problem there too. The advice was to do his last troll of the day to the far end of the dam and then run at high revs at least 20-30 minues back to the ramp, and this should heat up the oil and burn off any fuel.
Just something to be aware of.
A couple of other interesting facts:
The total Australasian (NZ and Aust) outboard market is dominated by Merc and Yamaha - they have about 70% of total sales according to an OEDA submission to the Aust govt regarding the proposal to phase out the import of new high-emission 2 strokes from 2012 or 2013.
In Australia, Yamaha and Suzuki dominate VMR and volunteer Coastguard vessels, I suspect mainly due to sponsorship deals.
Cheers
ML