[jonny]

Our son has a one-year old boat with a Tohatsu 40 hp. Back in late summer, it developed a problem of stalling out after about 20 seconds of running. He took it to a dealer in Charleston who kept it for over three months and ultimately replaced the powerhead. He got it back, put it in the water to start the break-in period and the same exact thing happened again. He immediately went and bought a Yamaha. No problems since.

So, no, Tohatsu’s aren’t immune from problems.

Sounds like fuel starvation problem. It was probably something stupid simple that the mechanic overlooked. And just took a shot with the big caliber parts cannon. If it was a power head the chances were near zero to get a new one with the exact same issue. Most likely a fuel pump, leak, primer bulb or possibly an electrical glitch. Sounds like you were a victim of a shady/bad mechanic. When you find a good one stick with them. They can be very hard to find these days. I just replaced a customer’s low hours(400?) f70 with low compression in two cylinders. He went ahead and got a fresh f70 installed. So they are all mechanical and can have issues. I install mostly Tohatsu on these little skiffs. Mainly because of the 15” shafts, light weight, reliability and solid power. And never had a problem with one. I personally have a 2015 Tohatsu 50 with 500 hours. It has been trouble free. Except I have to give a little throttle to start. But it does always start for me. I had one customer with an old Tohatsu 2 stroke that we couldn’t get the ignition parts for anymore. He went with a new Tohatsu four stroke after getting 12 years outta his old one.

 

[jonny]

Well that should have isolated it down between the power head and fuel hose connection. Not much left after that. A common module that controls spark/fuel, sensors and the few options left in fuel delivery. Sounds like that guy wasted a lot of your time and Tohatsu’s money. Was probably something that should have been fixed in days and few hundred dollars of parts for Tohatsu. I blame the tech more that Tohatsu. Hell they replaced the entire power head off his misdiagnosis for you. That’s easily over $2000 in parts plus the labor they paid to have him not fix it. The both of you were victims of this jackass in my opinion. They were trying to make it right. But could only go off what he was telling them.