Nissan NSF4A Water intake strainer

[km1125]

I bought a NSF4A that had the anti-cavitation plate and skeg broken. I picked up another lower housing (used) and was swapping parts when I started to notice differences. Apparently the housing I bought was from a newer motor. The original anode was round, the new one was rectangular. No big deal, as the anode came with it.

When I went to swap the water intake strainer, I noticed that it was straight in the original housing, but in the new housing it is "crooked" by about 10 degrees because the screw if slightly offset to one side. I don't think it would really cause a problem but I started looking through the various parts lists for different years and all I can see listed is WATER STRAINER part number 369-60206-0 for all models and not a different one that might accommodate this offset. Does anyone know if there were a couple different strainers for two different housings?

The water intake is more just of curiosity, but now I'm wondering if there might have been other changes that weren't so obvious and might be an issue. Does anyone know?

and...this might just be a 'parts list anomaly' but also when I look up the round anode (p/n 369-60218-0) it shows up listed in ALL models - previous to 2002 to present, as does the rectangular anode (p/n 3H6-60218-0) but if I look up the specific motor and years, the correct anode shows up for the right years.

 

[Sea Rider]

Probably mentioned on Parts Manual for that year. Newer Tohatsu have round anodes and water strainer if sligh off center. Is there a incompatible problem about fitting a new strainer to the other OB's lower leg. Strainers do protrude, to feed water more efficiently at speed, doesn't work flat under cav plate.

Happy Boating

 

[pvanv]

Year is irrelevant. If a parts dealer is using year of manufacture to differentiate Tohatsu motors, it is just plain misleading. You need the precise model and/or serial to know what the correct part will be. If you look at the actual Tohatsu parts catalog for that exact model, the parts will be correct. Of course, you may not know the actual model of the gear case, so you may need to investigate, by looking through several actual Tohatsu parts catalogs.

 

[km1125]

Year is irrelevant. If a parts dealer is using year of manufacture to differentiate Tohatsu motors, it is just plain misleading. You need the precise model and/or serial to know what the correct part will be. If you look at the actual Tohatsu parts catalog for that exact model, the parts will be correct. Of course, you may not know the actual model of the gear case, so you may need to investigate, by looking through several actual Tohatsu parts catalogs.

Yea, I don't know the exact model the new gear case came from and I think that's where the issue is. I was surprised that there was such a slight change though. I wasn't too surprised at the anode being different. What's weird to me is that no matter where I search or what models, I always get the same water strainer part. I would think either the 4A would have been different, with a slightly offset screwhole, or I would find some newer model that had a different part number from the 4A one. No matter what model I search (4A, 5B, 6C, etc) I get the same part number.

Note - I was using year just because that's the way iboats part lookup starts. Once you select year then you can select model, so the newer years are only 5B/6C the older ones are the 4A/5A. I do understand that year is irrelevant due to reading your various posts on these motors.

It just seems at some point there was an obvious change to the lower unit, I just don't know where that break point was.

My bigger question though, were there more changes that I should be aware of other than the two that I noticed? Perhaps I couldn't or shouldn't have used that part, or maybe it was just fine with only those two changes.

 

[pvanv]

What color is the gear case?

 

[km1125]

What color is the gear case?

The replacement (used) one was black, the original was silver-grey

 

[pvanv]

Black is new. Either B or C. Probably C. The colour is actually called aquamarine (which it is NOT), Not Aqua Marine.
Anyway. The strainer for a C model is

369602060M

SUB WATER STRAINER

 

[pvanv]

The brandy-new C models use this part:

369602060M

SUB WATER STRAINER

Which seems to be the same part...

 

[km1125]

The brandy-new C models use this part:

369602060M

SUB WATER STRAINER

Which seems to be the same part...

The NSF-4A shows 369-60206-0 for the strainer.... maybe the "M" at the end signifies a different version. That's not shown when I looked up the 6C.

Still trying to figure out if there are other differences though. I'm going to take a few measurements to see.

 

[pvanv]

No, the M is not anything special. It's the same part.

 

[km1125]

So, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? I took the lower unit out again to compare them. here is a pic with the old (grey) housing from the NSF4A next to pics of the "new" housing (which is now painted grey, but was black). The "new" housing is part number 825132T17. It's not really obvious, but you can see the strainer on the right is "tilted" a few degrees clockwise. If you look at the locating tab at the bottom, you can see the right one is offset from center. I'm just surprised none of this shows up as different parts to accommodate the offset.

 

[pvanv]

The difference is in the aluminum casting. The plastic strainer is the same for each. It is possible that the turbulence from the prop makes the tilted arrangement more efficient. I really don't know, but I would not worry about it.