Quote:
Originally Posted by rwidman
Unfortunately, the USA's EPA doesn't care much about our silly little problems and has pretty much made them unavailable in the USA.
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Other than the bigger environmentally approved 2-strokes from Evinrude and the like the two stroke is pretty much dead in the US as Ron says. However there is a diminishing glimmer of hope for someone who really wants a 2-stroke.
A couple of years ago when we decided to replace the 1978 Evinrude 6hp trolling motor on our Arima with something newer and more reliable I talked to the local Yamaha dealer about what would work on our boat. The four-stroke-only policy at Yamaha had already gone into effect. But he said that a lot of dealers, including them, knowing the 2-stroke cut-off date was approaching, had ordered inventories of the more popular 2-stroke engines to have in stock in the event a customer still wanted one.
The best Yamaha choices for our boat and its kicker mount were the new 6hp 4-stroke and the no-longer-available 8hp 2-stroke. The 8hp seemed the ideal engine and it turned out the dealer had ten of them. But...... the Arima requires a long-shaft trolling motor and none of the ten the dealer had were long shafts. Nor was he able to find a long-shaft in the northwest states. So we went with the 6hp 4-stroke which so far has been an excellent engine.
But if you really want a 2-stroke it's worth checking with the dealers, particularly the large ones who could afford to stock up, because they may still have some in inventory.