# Any Tohatsu 2 stroke junkies here ?



## noeettica (Sep 23, 2007)

These things are way too much fun

anybody else wrenching in theirs ?


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## BassFlats (Nov 26, 2018)

I have a late 90's premixed 2 cylinder 40hp tiller that I am going to use when I finish a skiff project.


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## Hunter Shepard (Feb 17, 2020)

There is a small market for 3 cyl. 40 hp. 2 stroke Tohatsus in Arkansas, Louisiana, and surrounding states.

As the story goes, tunnel hull racers in the 90s wanted to use a high-displacement 25 hp. outboard but some regulation stated that the engine had to be available for sale to the public. To satisfy this criteria, Lake Area Marine in LA imported a few hundred Tohatsu 25 Megas, which were basically tuned down 40s that were capable of producing middle 50 hp if wrenched correctly.

Fast forward twenty years and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission started regulating WMAs for duck hunting. One of the regulations was a 25 hp or lower restriction on its most popular flooded timber hunting area. In effect, the AGFC created jon boat NASCAR where racing and cheating were pretty much accepted amongst the go-fast crowd. All of a sudden, an obscure 25 hp. engine from south LA was the new hot commodity. At one point, a real-deal 25 hp Tohatsu Mega was as much or more than a new 40 hp outboard. 

The engine was popular enough that there was a secondary demand for 3 cyl. 40s and counterfeit serial number plates, because that's what the engine was to begin with and it isn't all that hard to put a fake serial plate on an engine that isn't in any way regulated. Some would even stamp the engine block with the same serial number, paint the block and essentially have a brand-new engine under a 25 year old cowling, mid, and lower.

Going a little further down the rabbit hole, go-fast aluminum hulls became a thing because a tuned up engine had enough push to run a pad hull and all of a sudden a 30 mph engine was a 50 mph engine on the right hull and boats were traveling WAY faster than boats traveled before the restriction.


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