Yamaha 300 XCA offshore 2013 – help!!!!

to all of the Yamaha lovers out there, I need some help. first of all I do love the motor or maybe did, the fuel economy mid and top end, BUT… I have had some issues that I did not see anybody on line talking about, maybe I got one that was manufactured on a Mon or a Friday before a vacation.
Had a hard horn issue last June, went to a Yamaha service center in Den CO , returned to me with no solution (i am in western CO so limited on Yamaha mechs). finally ended up in Ozark MO, last Nov, on a fishing trip, at Sport Boat USA, great service, happened to be the same boat manufacture dealer as my boat , anyways great Yamaha service center. tapped into His Yamaha tech rep (Thanks SBC for helping me out on the phone and informing me about Yamaha having a corporate tech for on site help, seemed to be a foreign concept in Den) and found it to be a shift computer failure, Yamaha replaced under warranty, Thank You Yamaha. Now\ at the lake 3wks ago drove over 175 mi in 4 days , ran great until loading it at ramp, motor would not shift into forward and than would not start. Just got it into Yamaha service center north of Denver, CO and the shift actuator had failed. motor hrs at 155. “Now not under warranty”. Now I am not sure on my investment of the power. Love the boat, looked extensively on line to try and see any inherent issues with this set up and did not see any complaints with the Yamaha, I have kept telling friends that this was going to be the last boat or boat manufacture that i was going to get (actually picked this boat manu. for the motor) i know what “BOAT” stands for but i have not put this much money into an opti 250 on my bass boat as i am now doing with this outboard. Are there any other issues that have been inherent to this motor??? I get serviced on time every year.
Please PM me if you would rather to let me know of problems i might expect with this set up.
thanks

Interesting to know.

My 2013 has ran awesome with no issues. (I almost didn’t want to comment cause I didn’t want the jinx it)

I have heard and seen pics of the offshore guys have 1000’s hrs on these motors with no issues which was one of my buying points like you said. I believe I have over 600 hrs on my motor and have done regularly scheduled maintenance.

Things happen to any motor manufacture I guess.

thought the same thing as Carver when I read this (don’t want to jinx it) My 2013 has never missed a beat.

slawrenz wrote:

thought the same thing as Carver when I read this (don’t want to jinx it) My 2013 has never missed a beat.

I’ve owned a number of the Off Shore motors but have never had an issue of any kind with any of them. Sorry, nothing to add that could help the OP find the cause.

thanks guys for the info, again your stories are what I have read and heard about the offshore. I am not sure about these issues on this outboard nobody can give me any inputs as far as cause. the service center stated that the only time that they see the shift actuator going out is on the CO state boats, they run offshore 150s . again SBC has been great to talk to you guys in the north have a tremendous resource.

Couple things to add. As far as history on that motor having issues, we haven’t seen them and can honestly say we haven’t had a shifting issue at all on any of them.
My only advise would be to get it to a Yamaha dealership that does a lot with Yamaha. Being you had previous, similar issues with the same general issue I would be surprised if Yamaha didn’t help you out. That usually goes back to the dealer being on your side and asking Yamaha to help. If they just looked up your serial number and said its out of warranty Yamaha will not even know about it. I would push the issue with the dealer or try to get the Yamaha DSM involved again and see what he can do to help out.

Thanks Eric for the recommendation. talked again with service center doing the work , they told me that they spoke with their corp. yam. rep. and he flat denied the warranty help. Spoke with the MO service center that completed the shift computer RR and they are going to get with their Corp. Yam. Service tech that came out originally and hopefully get somewhere with Yam. Your experience with the shift system is very much the same as every service center that I have spoke with/ never seen or had any issues. that being said it seems like my issues are related , so did the computer take out the actuator or vise versa, maybe not. Hopefully Yamaha does pick up some of or all of the RR. Like I said I have never had anything like this with my OPti and it is 12 yrs old with 375Hrs. thanks again for the suggestions. glad to hear other people are not experiencing the same thing or that there has been any chronic issues hopefully once I get thru this system RR all will be fine or typ service issues not system issues