Normal
I messed around about a year ago and hooked up my 2020 Mercury 60 HP battery backward. Stupid mistake but it happened. Blew a diode in the ignition circuit. This motor had exactly 5 hours on it at the time. The part was around $80 and was.....wait for it......on back order and had been for over a year. I found this hard to believe but it was absolutely true....and to make it that much worse every electric start Mercury outboard built in the last 30 years or so has this same part in the ignition circuit somewhere.....from the smallest to the biggest motors they sell they all have this exact same part in them.....and to the best of my knowledge Mercury had not had any of them in stock for spares from at least from at least March or so of 2020 until now! That is not a supply chain issue that is just very bad management planning. The reason I know this is I made this part for my motor for $.18....yes, an $80 part for 18 cents and it is identical to the one that Mercury can not source anywhere on the planet...where I bought enough material to make a couple of hundred of them on amazon and had it all delivered to my house in 3 days for less than $20 all in. I told Merucy that I had 99 of them in stock LOL and they said it would invalidate the warranty on a new motor LOL.Imagine that....a 300 HP outboard sitting idol for a year or so for want of 18 cents worth of diode and the manufacturer is concerned about the warranty...on a motor they can not get parts for under any circumstance LOL. That has NOTHING to do with COVID, supply chain issues, global warming or anything other than bad management, period. It is universal in the world today and you can rest assured that these mismanaged companies in these mismanaged industries are going to start whining for a bailout sooner than later and both parties will be pushing one another out of the way to facilitate that money grab.
I messed around about a year ago and hooked up my 2020 Mercury 60 HP battery backward. Stupid mistake but it happened. Blew a diode in the ignition circuit. This motor had exactly 5 hours on it at the time. The part was around $80 and was.....wait for it......on back order and had been for over a year. I found this hard to believe but it was absolutely true....and to make it that much worse every electric start Mercury outboard built in the last 30 years or so has this same part in the ignition circuit somewhere.....from the smallest to the biggest motors they sell they all have this exact same part in them.....and to the best of my knowledge Mercury had not had any of them in stock for spares from at least from at least March or so of 2020 until now! That is not a supply chain issue that is just very bad management planning. The reason I know this is I made this part for my motor for $.18....yes, an $80 part for 18 cents and it is identical to the one that Mercury can not source anywhere on the planet...where I bought enough material to make a couple of hundred of them on amazon and had it all delivered to my house in 3 days for less than $20 all in. I told Merucy that I had 99 of them in stock LOL and they said it would invalidate the warranty on a new motor LOL.
Imagine that....a 300 HP outboard sitting idol for a year or so for want of 18 cents worth of diode and the manufacturer is concerned about the warranty...on a motor they can not get parts for under any circumstance LOL. That has NOTHING to do with COVID, supply chain issues, global warming or anything other than bad management, period. It is universal in the world today and you can rest assured that these mismanaged companies in these mismanaged industries are going to start whining for a bailout sooner than later and both parties will be pushing one another out of the way to facilitate that money grab.
