Can I Import a 2 Stroke Motor to CA from Australia ?

[Canibul]

We tried to get our gasoline powered Brownie's Third Lung hookah shipped down to the TCI some years ago, and none of the airlines flying here from the US at the time (American, Delta,USAir, JetBLue) would take a gas engine. We shipped it sea freight, eventually.

As for 2 vs 4 stroke, the answer is obvious if power-to-weight ratio, simplicity of maintenance/repair, and costs are factors. Four strokes are quieter. that's it.

As far as emissions, etc, I figure a small, under ten hp two stroke is about equal to a four stroke plus some charcoal bbq starter fluid. The problem is that there are a whole lot more cans of starter fluid being used than can be compensated for by switching to 4 strokes. I never see anyone comparing the environmental cost of manufacturing that many more components, and the environmental costs of manufacturing more parts and the additional environmental costs of shipping more parts and more spares that a four stroke requires. A million extra gaskets? Disposing of how many gallons of crankcase oil?

Where is all that crankcase oil from all those four strokes actually going?

We know where the two stroke oil is going, it's being efficiently burned, and that it's not polluting or incurring additional oil be burned to transport it to some recycling scheme. How much fuel do we reckon gets burned to transport one gallon of used motor oil all the way through the recycling process until it's back on the shelf at NAPA? This is as bad as the ethanol scam. Just feel good measures, with nothing positive really coming out of it from an environmental standpoint. pork barrel politics.

[JayH]

2-stroke oil being burned efficiently might apply to the E-TEC, but not the rest. Run one in a bucket sometime and you might be surprised. I was.

Unfortunately, I won't have an E-TEC for the same reason I don't want a 4-stroke. They're heavy and complicated. And last time I looked they didn't come in sizes under 25, which keeps them off of most dinghies.

[Canibul]

Depends on the motor. Most people who argue against two strokes these days seem to want to use descriptions of the state of the technology from thirty years ago for two strokes, and somehow compare that to a marketing department's brochure of the promise of the 4 stroke of today. Hey, we have a four stroke. 90 horse Suzuki. Runs great. Nice and quiet.

It's too heavy. And I have oil and a filter to change.
and there is NO oil recycling here, so guess where it's gotta go? I can either dump it out, or burn it. Which part of the environment are we protecting with the 4 stroke these days, I need to make a decision.

[boatsmith]

Oh yeah that's the ticket. Let's stick to old simple technology and closeour minds to reality. The reality is that the two stokes by very nature dispense a lot of oil out with the exhaust. Tecnology can reduce this. But if you are around a launch ramp on a SAt am early the water will be cleaner than if you look at the same water at 10am. This is a small world we live in and we are fouling it immensely. But I supposethat if we only care about right now and our convenience and our wallet then we won't make any changes. If the little guys are requieredto be greener then they will have less tolerance for the big guys pollution and they will apply pressure. Or you say f**k it let some oneelse sweat it. LIke your kids and their kids. If you really want to be greener than row. Sure theres a lot more crap washed int the LA river in a big rainstorm than all of the rec boats dump in a year in So Cal. Does that mean we should not care? Thisocean isbecoming more and more polluted and will die without a course change. Then you won't be concerned about a tender motor. This heel dragging about small motor polution is the same as has happened previously with cars. Cars are much better now than they were. Save your money, don't pay the man, row,sail, walk, bike. Anybody who thinks that dependence upon an oil based economy is the way to go is shortsghted and ignorant of the facts.The rate of oil consunption in the world is increasing rapidly. The easist oil has been burnt. How can anybody with a functioning chunk of grey matter think that oil is not going to cost more, much more. Not to mention the huge chunk of our economy that is tied directly to our consuming vast quantities of oil. And our military might that is spent securing our supply of foreign oil from folks that would just as soon we die.

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by Canibul

We tried to get our gasoline powered Brownie's Third Lung hookah shipped down to the TCI some years ago, and none of the airlines flying here from the US at the time (American, Delta,USAir, JetBLue) would take a gas engine. We shipped it sea freight, eventually.

As for 2 vs 4 stroke, the answer is obvious if power-to-weight ratio, simplicity of maintenance/repair, and costs are factors. Four strokes are quieter. that's it.

As far as emissions, etc, I figure a small, under ten hp two stroke is about equal to a four stroke plus some charcoal bbq starter fluid. The problem is that there are a whole lot more cans of starter fluid being used than can be compensated for by switching to 4 strokes. I never see anyone comparing the environmental cost of manufacturing that many more components, and the environmental costs of manufacturing more parts and the additional environmental costs of shipping more parts and more spares that a four stroke requires. A million extra gaskets? Disposing of how many gallons of crankcase oil?

Where is all that crankcase oil from all those four strokes actually going?

We know where the two stroke oil is going, it's being efficiently burned, and that it's not polluting or incurring additional oil be burned to transport it to some recycling scheme. How much fuel do we reckon gets burned to transport one gallon of used motor oil all the way through the recycling process until it's back on the shelf at NAPA? This is as bad as the ethanol scam. Just feel good measures, with nothing positive really coming out of it from an environmental standpoint. pork barrel politics.

two strokes very simple and easy to work on ..suck -bang -boom, better than any small 4-stroke for power ,weight and the enviroment...DVC

[Canibul]

david, you've got MORE oil in whatever four stroke you own than I have in whatever two stroke I own AND the four stroke polluted more even being manufactured to replace a two stroke that would probably have run fine another ten years, and then been fixable by a shade tree mechanic using common hand tools. NOT a computer station hooked up to a power supply at a dealer where a technician spent weeks burning petroleum while studying how to hook the computer up to the four stroke.

Watching the whole four stroke thing develop over the years, I was amazed. It was truly an astounding bit of marketing and commercial planning. And everyone in the US bought four strokes. Whether they needed new outboards or not.

It's almost as beautiful as the 'lets pay farmers to grow corn and make ethanol because it's environmentally better" scam.

You been drinking the cool aid.
Do the math.

please, tell me this:

IF Yamaha or Evinrude or Chinese Outboard Company or whomever, comes out with a two stroke that has markedly better emissions than any four stroke being built today, would you support banning all existing four strokes from being imported to the USA and then replacing them with the new two strokes?

sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? Yet, that is EXACTLY what was done to the two strokes. Outboard folks came up with something that they could get politicians to vote for, simply because nobody would vote AGAINST a cleaner engine.

What they should have done was just make a spec, and let the manufacturers compete to that spec.

But the population of the US is remarkably gullible. tell them something is better, and if you do it right, they'll accept that without ever looking into it on their own.

The rest of the world is not restricted to being only able to buy four strokes, by the way. they buy the most economical engines. And since the economy of engines is directly tied to what consumables they burn, the economics of what's available determines what gets bought. And for most of the world, the best deal is stll a two stroke.

[s/v Jedi]

People have been brain washed so hard that even after my post with quotes that show modern 2-strokes are much greener than modern 4-strokes (up to a hundred times cleaner!), they just keep repeating that 4-strokes are clean and 2-strokes are not. They have been programmed to say that and they will stick to it no matter what. They should have put on that tin foil hat a bit more often

ciao!
Nick.

[xymotic]

But it's only part of the story. Modern 2 strokes are CAPABLE of being much cleaner, but in actual practice the vast majority are the same old tech. Built cheaply, and they put oil into the air and water by design.

Sure, it's a 'tiny' amount, but that too is besides the point. A 4 stroke is self contained, the oil can and should be recycled. As someone else said, nobody wants to buy a heavy, expensive and complicated 2 stroke, even if they existed in small sizes, which they don't.

[Canibul]

Following the logic that was used, and that is also being repeated by some of the four stoke zombies here, it makes sense to immediately ban all four stroke outboards in the USA and mandate that the ONLY outboard that can be sold is the "greenest" one, which will mean you all have to dump those Yamaha and Merc motors and buy Evinrudes.

No excuses! You MUST do it!

[hellosailor]

If you are too young to remember swimming in any ocean beach and many lakes used to require bringing "tar remover" along, because you'd inevitably come out with a glob of tar on you.

You can blame that on torpedoed WW2 tankers for only so long, lots of those tar balls in lake beaches came from the two-strokes on fishing boats. Good riddance to two strokes, and if you've never needed tar remover after a day in the water, you cna thank the EPA for banning the old kind, too.

[MarkSF]

Lots of ill informed opinions here masquerading as fact.

What happened was, the EPA and CARB specified tough emissions standards. (the current toughest is 3 star). To meet these requirements, they switched to manufacturing 4 stroke engines. If they could have met the requirements with 2 strokes at a reasonable price point, they would have done so. The simple fact is that a modern 4 stroke engine can be made to run very cleanly, whereas it's much harder with a 2 stroke.

I can really understand why the weight of a 4 stroke is a problem for people. But saying that a modern 3-star rated engine is not far, far cleaner running than an old 2 stroke is just plain rubbish, frankly. They are also much more fuel efficient. I say again, the only problem is weight.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by xymotic

A 4 stroke is self contained, the oil can and should be recycled. As someone else said, nobody wants to buy a heavy, expensive and complicated 2 stroke, even if they existed in small sizes, which they don't.

Well, that is a sweet story, now just consider the reality of the world outside the 1st world. Name me one oil recycling plant in the 3rd world where the people bring their old oil. They don't, they throw it in the garbage which ends up in the water, or they burn it like a 2-stroke does. 4-strokes can be cleaner than old 2-strokes but only in the very small minority part of the world where people pay to get rid of old oil.

The whole discusion is moot of course, because the rest of the world uses 2-strokes anyway. Like others say, modern ones (not talking e-tec) with 100:1 gasil ratio are much greener than the 2-strokes that most think about with their oil on the water stories.

Now people don't want complicated big green 2-strokes ?! I thought the reason to switch to complicated big not-so-green 4-strokes was because they were greener? So tell me the reason why complicated big 4-strokes are okay and the greener complicated big 2-strokes are not? The 2-strokes are even much more powerful!
http://www.youtube.com/index?desktop...?v=_-7I00cZUE0

ciao!
Nick.

[xymotic]

Which then goes back to 'well it's too hard' or 'well why should we do it if they aren't'

Both of which are pretty lame excuses IMO. Just because Other countries detonate nuclear weapons above ground, doesn't make it OK for us to do it. Just because we used to do it, doesn't make it ok for others to do it now.

[ausaviator]

2 strokes are banned from most fresh water lakes in AU too but we can still buy them for use on the ocean where the small amount of pollution they put out is largely irrelevant for a small yacht tender.

Oh really, that is news to me as I just bought one. Have you got a link for this?



Dennisail - I wouldn't bother with the Tohatsu, they are a cheap Nissan engine and nowhere near as good as the name brands!

I just bought an 8hp Mercury - $1820 from Bay Marine in Melbourne.

As a matter of interest, the Tohatsu 9.9 is exactly the same enigne as the 8hp, except that it revs higher (see the following).

8.0 - TOHATSU 8 HP 2-STROKE prices, specs, manuals and brochures.
9.9 - TOHATSU 9.9 HP 2-STROKE prices, specs, manuals and brochures.

My Mercury is similar; the 8hp is exactly the same specifciations as the 6hp in terms of piston and bore etc, however the carby is re-jetted to give more HP. In the case of your Tohatsu, it's exactly the same in every way as I understand it but the 9.9 revs to a higher RPM (check web links above).

Ultimately, I'm not sure what's better. You might be better off with an 8hp Mercury (or similar) versus a 9.9 Tohatsu in more ways that one....

I'll open the floor on that debate. ..... . .... . ....

I'm running an 8hp Mercury 2 stroke on a 3 metre New Concept inflatable Zodiac copy. It's 46 kg's with alloy floor and rubber hull with inflatable deep V. With 14 litres of fuel, safety equipment, 2 people and a total payload not including engine of around 200kg's we get along at 32-35 kmh flat out.

Boat was $550 new on Ebay. Fits in the boot of the car.

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by ausaviator

Oh really, that is news to me as I just bought one. Have you got a link for this?



Dennisail - I wouldn't bother with the Tohatsu, they are a cheap Nissan engine and nowhere near as good as the name brands!

I just bought an 8hp Mercury - $1820 from Bay Marine in Melbourne.

As a matter of interest, the Tohatsu 9.9 is exactly the same enigne as the 8hp, except that it revs higher (see the following).

8.0 - TOHATSU 8 HP 2-STROKE prices, specs, manuals and brochures.
9.9 - TOHATSU 9.9 HP 2-STROKE prices, specs, manuals and brochures.

My Mercury is similar; the 8hp is exactly the same specifciations as the 6hp in terms of piston and bore etc, however the carby is re-jetted to give more HP. In the case of your Tohatsu, it's exactly the same in every way as I understand it but the 9.9 revs to a higher RPM (check web links above).

Ultimately, I'm not sure what's better. You might be better off with an 8hp Mercury (or similar) versus a 9.9 Tohatsu in more ways that one....

I'll open the floor on that debate. ..... . .... . ....

I'm running an 8hp Mercury 2 stroke on a 3 metre New Concept inflatable Zodiac copy. It's 46 kg's with alloy floor and rubber hull with inflatable deep V. With 14 litres of fuel, safety equipment, 2 people and a total payload not including engine of around 200kg's we get along at 32-35 kmh flat out.

Boat was $550 new on Ebay. Fits in the boot of the car.

Tohatsu made your Mercury engine. All small Nissans and Mercurys are made by Tohatsu.