First off, I rarely, if ever post reviews, especially negative ones but this story should be told.
While performing routine maintenance on my mercury outboard in early February, I noticed some mild water intrusion when changing the lower unit oil. It was also due for a water pump change so I called up the folks at dream marine ( I live a couple miles away) to inquire if they carried any parts for mercury. The fellow at the service counter was helpful and asked me to come in to verify which lower unit I had so he could order the parts. So far so good, after a conversation with the service manager he suggested that I most likely needed a prop shaft seal replacement to stop the water intrusion, that they could easily perform that and would do a vacuum leak down test to insure the issues were fixed and the lower unit was sealed. Ok,great! I left the lower unit with them, after they said they planned to begin work on it sometime the next week.
After 3 weeks I began to wonder what the status was so I called and was assured that things were in progress and parts were ordered. Another week goes by and I get a call that the bearing carrier got destroyed in the attempt to replace the seals, but that they were going to order a replacement.
Another week goes by and I went back to the shop to check in, admittedly I was less than cordial with the service manager(regretfully) and he suggested that I could just take the dissembled parts of my "piece of shit" mercury lower unit home as they were, if I was unsatisfied. I apologized for my rudeness and the manager agreed to proceed with the repairs.
A week later the fellow at the parts desk called and reported that the parts still hadn't arrived, but were expected. The following week he called and said that they had repaired the lower unit and would like me to bring my boat in so they could re-install and verify everything was right, so I did and they finished quickly; I brought it home the same day.
Being the particular sort I am, I pulled the upper vent plug on the lower unit and passed a zip tie down into the gear case to verify there was sufficient gear oil, not being able to reach the oil level with a 10" zip tie I got nervous and drained the gear case to assure the proper oil and amount was used. There was oil in the gear case, but not as much as I expected to find. So, I replaced the gear oil and hoped for the best and headed off to the lake for a short trip the next day. The boat ran fine and I was pleased. The following morning when I found a pool of lower unit gear oil on my garage floor. Inspection revealed oil leaking from around the prop shaft.
I called back the next day to notify them and they did offer to "take another look at it". I declined to take it back in, as I figured if they had been unable to repair it in 7 weeks , then they simply weren't capable. Having paid 330 dollars for a repair that resulted in more problems than I had to start with , I'm going to cut my losses and take it somewhere else. Worse than the lost money and the hassle of having to take it for the same repair twice, is the lost fishing time in our already short season.
I would not recommend Dream Marine for outboard service. read more