2 Cycle Oil | Outboard Motor Oil - Part 9

2 Cycle Oil Is Worth It

11882883My friend likes to find cheaper alternatives for just about everything. He never buys name brand items; he usually gets the generic brand. I’m sure most of the items do the same things but some items are better than others I imagine. I guess I have more trust in name brand items because I would expect they would perform better. That might not necessarily be the case, but that’s how I feel.

My friend bought some generic 2 cycle oil for his outboard engine. I warned him that some brands weren’t going to be as good as others and that when it comes to things like engine maintenance, he should stick with the better quality stuff. It will eventually do some harm to his engine but he still likes to buy the cheaper alternative. In the long run, it will cost him more to repair the parts that were damaged.

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Smokey Engine

604066900_8b06be5115_oI like to say that I am a loyal individual.  I’ve been with my wife for over twenty years,  I’ve supported my teams for my entire life it seems like, and I only use one brand of underwear.  My parents are the same way which explains why I am also.  They taught me that if something or someone never does me wrong, then it’s safe to stick with it until you need to do otherwise.

I’ve had my boat for the better part of ten years.  I like to take it out fishing on the weekends and enjoy some quiet time with myself or with some friends and family.  I’ve been using once specific brand of oil on my outboard engine and it hasn’t given me a problem until recently.  My engine has been more smoky than usual lately.  A friend of my suggested that I try some Mercury 2 Cycle Oil and see if it does anything different.  The result was the same so I guess it’s time to take the engine to a mechanic to see what is wrong with it.

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Surprise Boat Trip

One of my friends called me up out of the blue recently; I hadn’t heard from him in a while so I was a little surprised. He told me to come over to his house because he had some awesome plans for the weekend that he wanted to include me in. I didn’t have anything planned so I went over to his house.

When I got there, he had a bottle of Yamaha 2W oil in one hand and a printed off picture of Chesapeake Bay in the other hand. Quickly, I knew exactly what we were going to be doing that weekend and it was much-needed. We were going to do some boating and fishing up in Chesapeake Bay. We went out there and had a great time.

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Christmas Shopping

It’s getting to be that time of year again when Christmas is just around the corner. I’ve been trying to get all the shopping for Christmas presents out of the way but my family never really gives me any hints of what I should buy them and when I ask them what they want, they usually nonchalantly say that they can’t think of anything specific and that I’ll figure something out.

I had to pretty much improvise when I was picking up Christmas presents for everyone. I got some candles and things like that for my mom. I got my dad some 2 cycle oil for his boat, because I figured you could never have enough for that. And I got some video games for my little brother, because all he really does is play video games.

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Buying in Bulk

I absolutely hate shopping and I always have. I’ve just always seen it as a huge burden. Ever since the advent of online shopping, I’ve loved that I can at least do shopping at home but I still feel like I’m using up all of my precious free time when I have to shop for anything, especially if it’s something I can’t find online.

These days, when I’ve decided to buy something, I prefer to buy a lot of it all at once (if it’s something that doesn’t really expire, of course) so that I don’t have to go through the process of buying more of it later. For instance, when I decided to get a new boat, I bought enough Yamalube 2 cycle oil that I wouldn’t have to buy any again for years.

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Be Prepared

I prefer to buy things in bulk as opposed to buying products individually. I’ve always been a big fan of places like Costco where I can buy massive amounts of the products I need for decent wholesale prices. I do this with food – preferably with the kind of food that doesn’t expire too quickly – and I do this with many other different kinds of products that I use regularly.

For instance, I do this with products that I use to maintain my car and my boat, mostly because I believe it’s better to already be prepared for a problem or an oil change or something like that than it is to not be prepared at all. If you’ve got enough bottles of two cycle oil, you don’t have to go out too often and find more of it, as long as you keep the oil in a safe place.

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Breaking In An Engine

Breaking in a new two cycle motor before you really take it out for a spin is very important and it’s something many people forget about. Some say that the first ten hours that you treat your motor will reflect how the boat runs for the entire time you have it. What’s important at first is to use some extra lubrication.

If you have a non oil injected engine, you should run two pints of two cycle outboard oil to every six gallons of gas. With an oil injected engine, you should instead run one pint to every six gallons. You should also make sure to limit your RPMs and make sure that you don’t get too close to max RPM within the first ten hours or so of running your boat.

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From Canada to California

When I lived in Canada, I was always a big fan of going out on my snowmobile. Then, a few years ago, I moved out to California for work. There were a lot of things that I had to adjust to in moving countries, but even more than the differences between the United States and Canada were simpler things such as suddenly dealing with warm weather all of the time, which I was far from used to.

When winter came around, I would drive around on my snowmobile and pick up snowmobile oil. These days, I instead use a Waverunner and pick up Waverunner oil, and I can even do that in the winter! I enjoy living in California a lot and sometimes it’s strange how many parallels there really are – like the snowmobile and Waverunner parallel – but sometimes I do miss things back home.

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Different Interests

My girlfriend is different from most girls. She grew up as the youngest child with five older brothers and her interests have been heavily influenced by her dad and her brothers. She’s really interested in cars and boats, for instance. She even has her own boat, which is rare for a girl in her twenties who still lives in an apartment.

Even gift-giving with her is a little strange, certainly different than what it’s been like for my previous girlfriends. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and all she could think of was a bottle of Mercury 2 cycle oil. She uses it for her boat. It’s a very different experience just because she’s interested in such different things than anyone else I’ve dated before.

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Excessive or Prepared?

My dad can be a little excessive sometimes, although he claims that he’s just trying to always stay prepared. And for the most part, he is prepared for any occasion, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he’s also pretty excessive. Take his new boat for instance: he sold his old car and picked up a new car on a whim just so he’d be able to properly tow the boat.

When it came to finding things to maintain his boat, he was bit excessive too. For instance, there were a lot of things that he bought in bulk. He picked up an oil drum filled with Yamalube 2W oil so that he wouldn’t have to worry about purchasing it by the bottle.

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Dad’s Birthday Present to Himself

I was trying to figure out what to get my dad for his birthday. I knew he was already planning on purchasing his own massive birthday present – since my mom finally approved it financially – and it seemed to me like there wasn’t going to be much else he would want. He was buying himself a boat.

I figured that he’d probably need some things to maintain his new toy. Knowing my dad, he’d be way too focused in picking out the actual boat than thinking about all the accessories and things he’d need to maintain it. I bought him a bottle or two of 2 cycle oil because I knew he’d need it for the new boat he had treated himself to.

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A Boat for a Decade

I purchased my boat in 2001 after my kids first left for college; I figured that once the kids were out of the house, it was finally time for me to get something for my own relaxation and a boat was exactly the way to do it. I’ve taken that boat to pretty much every lake in Washington.

Using Yamalube 2 cycle oil on my boat has kept it in tip-top shape for over a decade; I’ve had no problems with it – other than the expected maintenance from having a boat for more than ten years – whatsoever! I plan on continuing to use it for as long as I live in an area that supports boating.

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