[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Why I Hate Zéphyrs! copied from ODDJOBMOTORS site [/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]When I was a kid in the 1970’s things were pretty bleak; the economy, music, fashion, everything was spiraling downwards. Messing[/FONT][FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif] with old outboards was my escape and kept me from getting involved with a lot of the bad stuff some of my contemporaries were doing. I became known around the harbor as the kid who could fix motors the professionals gave up on or wouldn't even touch. (Hey, the sales manual says it’s much easier and more profitable to sell a new motor than to fix an old one.) Many folks would simply give me old motors since “the pros” would tell them they had no value and couldn't’t be fixed.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]One of the most popular old motors I was given as a kid was the 5.4hp Evinrude Zephyr. Evinrude sold the Zephyr from about 1940 through 1949 - the name had been made popular with the V-12 Lincoln cars of the 1930's. The Zephyr outboard incorporated 4 cylinders (most 5hp motors have 2) and other “advanced features” to provide boaters with the “ultimate” fishing motor. The designers of the Zephyr, working at their drafting tables in the depression, were so busy packing the Zephyr with engineering doohickeys that they never foresaw that one day these doodads would become tarnished, clogged or require service. They also didn't provide the Zephyr with any cooling at the ends of the combustion chamber and crossed the fabric covered spark plug wires in close proximity to the gasoline filled carburetor. (I also think they are just plain ugly!)[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]Gooped up with ancient gas, covered in grease and sporting 4 cracked spark plug wires, armadas of Zephyrs made their way to me in the 1970’s. I spent hours wrestling the complex suckers back to life and tried them out on my 14’ skiff Messenger. Yes, they were smooth running but were completely under whelming in performance, most had no provision for reversing and I would burn the heck out of myself on the cylinder heads. And the leaky carburetor and those deteriorated fabric spark plug wires were an incendiary time bomb! [/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]When the third Zephyr I had caught fire the drill was old hat – undo the transom clamps and drop it in the water to put out the fire. Only this time the cracked bake-o-lite gas cap spewed fuel and I was in a sea of fire! I hacked my safety line and dropped the Zephyr to the depths of the Sound and then high-tailed it away from the scene via oars. The Messenger suffered a scorched transom and I looked a little funny with only my left eyebrow but both of us survived. I gave away, took to the dump or tossed overboard the remaining Zephyrs. Give me a Johnson TD any day – in addition to being easier to work on, more attractive and having reverse, they are much less flammable![/FONT]
