Mercury Outboard Fire

[reelguy]

I have a '03 4-stroke Mercury 50 horse that started on fire the other day. It looks as if it started on some sort of electrical piece that is just above the oil filter. Anyone have this happen, know of a problem Mercury's had or any recalls?

[boatfixer]

Personally I haven't heard, but I sure hope every one is OK. Thats got to be a scary deal.

[john.wells]

Wow. I would let a dealer know about this, even if there is no warranty; there could be a recall, or at least the start of one.

[Musky_Madness]

I had a similar thing happen to a Nissan 25 hp that lit up when I was starting it leaving the boat launch. It didn't start and I could smell something and looked under the cover to see a ball of flames and quick threw water once I ripped the cowl cover off. Didn't do much damage but found a crack in the fuel filter housing. Made for an interesting day.

[Sandmannd]

Wow, that had to be scary. Hope you are OK.

[rockman]

Yep, outboard fires suck! I had one on a boat with a 5.5 hp Johnson that caught fire, many years ago.The wife and I ended up in the lake while the whole back end of the boat burned.Thank goodness the tank didn't explode. Torched the trolling motor my brother-in-law loaned me, too.No fun, that's for sure.

[Black_Bay]

I've had problems with 2 40 hp Mercury outboards having, as the dealer put it "thermal events". They weren't full blown fires but wires did burn and there was a lot of smoke. It turned out to be the voltage regulator. Both times it was covered under the warranty and I believe, but I'm not positive, that there was a TSB about the issue.

[reelguy]

BB, I did some research and found that same issue. I'm thinking that is what the problem was seeing how my battery went bad last year at the end of the season and this was the first time out with the new battery. Wonder if they'll still cover that though being how its almost 5 years old? I never got anything from them recalling it?

[Gump48]

Heads up here! A group of 2003 Mercury 50 HP 4 Strokes had a known defective voltage regulator that is subject to a high priority safety recall. Had the same thing described here happen to ours.

Mercury made good even though the motor was out of warranty and made good on all of the repairs and the collateral damage due to the fire. You should call Mercury service and verify the Serial number of motor to the recall list.