lemon of an outboard????????

I have a 1980 johnson 60 hp.2 cyl. this will be the 3rd leg put on. Is this just 2 times lucky ??<br />- bought boat 3 years ago motor ran well but the lower end was gone. said they had hit rocks etc. (young guy)<br />-purchased a so called rebuilt leg installed it and used it for 5 -6 times. it also went, motor runs fine tore down leg and gears were gone.<br />only thing that happened was in towing up a drive way the motor was down and the leg hit the pavement hard enough to break off half the fin. <br />could this have resulted in failure?? moter ran the 5-6 outings after that fine untill BOOM..<br />(drained oil it ran green no water contamination. there was about a liter or better that i drained.)<br />I have purcased a used lower leg again and will install this week. Does this engine have a bad track record for failure.. was it a johnson lemon? or will it fail like that with a hard hit on bottem of leg.. does this hurt motor?? the end oh the drive shaft(splines) look fine no signs of stress..

Re: lemon of an outboard????????

IF you bought a 26 year old used 1980 Chevy, and you replaced the transmission 3 times with used ones, would you say that it was a lemon?<br /><br />If you were told the motor had hit rocks, perhaps the midsection was "sprung" and caused a mis-alignment of the gearcase to powerhead. Or possibly used parts are not always "pristine" inside.

Re: lemon of an outboard????????

So this should not have hurt the motor?? and the new leg when attached should run fine.

Re: lemon of an outboard????????

And yes i would question my car if i had the same problems the odds of 3 failures identicall are pretty high!

Re: lemon of an outboard????????

Multiple failures are indicative of incomplete or incorrect repair of the first one, Darryl.<br /><br />Parts can be caused to break by other parts that are out of spec. You must correct the cause as well as the result.<br /><br />Seahorse did not say that no damage should have occurred. Neither did he say a "new" lower end would fix it. It will be fixed when the original cause of the failure(s) is corrected as well as the result.<br /><br />If the engine was a lemon it surely wouldn't have stayed in service for 25 years.