The Outboard Expert: Inside the Skunk Works
Up close and personal in the test centers of Mercury Marine and Yamaha.
July 31, 2007
Located in the Florida panhandle, the X-Site opened in 2004 on an 8.5-acre site on a backwater called Watson Bayou.
The outboards of tomorrow are being tested today at top-secret, secured facilities. Teams of engineers and technicians are working hard to pile on hundreds of hours of in-water testing designed to gather data and push hardware to the limit.
I recent months, I've been permitted behind the fencing at two of the busiest outboard test centers; the Mercury Marine X-Site and the Yamaha Marine Test Center. My visits did not require burglar tools or disguises. Mercury invited me to tour its new facility and see the Verado 200 and Verado 300 as they were being put through final test paces in February. And last month Yamaha actually held its new-product media introduction at its test center - after it locked all the secret stuff in the back room.
The main function of both facilities is endurance validation testing. Even in this age of complex computer-aided design and finite element analysis, there is no substitute for testing a new outboard on the transom of a boat. According to one Mercury engineer I spoke with, "Boat testing is my best opportunity to break something." And according to that same engineer, one-third of the testing time behind a new outboard is on-boat endurance, but this real-world operation reveals 55 percent of the issues he'll encounter during the development process.
Mercury has an elaborate indoor testing facility in Fond du Lac, Wisc., where it can computer-control climate and water temperature, and run computer-controlled motors connected to data-loggers 24 hours a day. But testing motors on a boat stresses all systems together, from the cowling to the drive gears. The down-side of endurance testing is that it takes a long time. A six-cycle tank-testing program can be completed in about one month, but it takes up to five months to complete a 500-hour boat-testing cycle.
The motors being evaluated on the Yamaha and Mercury testing facilities are called validation motors, usually the second and third stages of development after a concept has been proven in a prototype stage. Perhaps 20 examples of the new motor are built on the assembly line using prototype parts, each worth about $30,000. There may be several design validation builds, especially on a brand-new product. The final development stage is called production validation, and may include 60 to 200 motors built on the production line using mostly production parts.
The job of racking up 500 hours of test time on these motors falls on the shoulders of a crew of test-boat drivers that typically put in an eight-hour shift. This is a tedious, grueling job that wears out most drivers after about three years. They are expected to run as fast as possible for the prevailing conditions, usually over a prescribed course, so the scenery never changes. The weather can range from searing heat to numbing cold. And all types of motors need to be validated - imagine spending a few weeks in an inflatable putting hours on a new 5-hp kicker. This testing, and the evaluation of the data collected during the process, is a key part in producing a today's outboards. Here's where it happens.
Yamaha Marine Test Center, Bridgeport, Alabama
Located a short drive from Chattanooga, Tenn., the Yamaha test center opened in 2000, and an expansion was just completed in 2007. Situated on 30 acres on the bank of the Tennessee River, the main building covers 32,800 square feet and includes office space and an open shop area the size of an airplane hanger. There are 12 covered boat slips plus storage for boats in a warehouse, and Yamaha keeps 30 to 40 boats of different types at the center.
The Bridgeport location was chosen in part for its isolation. It's at the end of the road. Most of the land along this stretch of the river is controlled by the TVA, so there's no residential development and very little recreational boating - which makes it hard for competitors to snoop without being spotted. The center faces a long island in the river, and while there's is a lot of barge traffic in the area it stays in a channel on the other side of the island. When we hold media events at the center, we run laps around the island that are about 10 miles long. Bridgeport is also about a 10-hour drive to confidential ocean sites where Yamaha does salt-water testing, and is about a two-hour drive from Yamaha Marine headquarters in Kennesaw, Ga., so it's not hard for staff to visit.
Yamaha conducts much of its initial product development in Japan, of course. But engineers from Japan are almost always on site in Bridgeport, where they have access to boats not available in Japan and can tap into the product knowledge and experience of Yamaha staff in the United States.
Mercury Marine X-Site, Panama City, Florida
Located in the Florida panhandle, the X-Site opened in 2004 on an 8.5-acre site on a backwater called Watson Bayou. The X-Site houses two separate Mercury operations. One side of the 30,000-square-foot shop is operated by Mercury Racing as a facility for winter testing, saltwater development, and customer support and rigging. Shop space across the aisle is devoted to research and development engineering and testing of regular production outboards.
The X-site replaces two well-known Mercury testing facilities, the MerCabo saltwater test station in Placida, Fla., and the legendary Lake X test station located near Clearwater, Florida. The X-Site consolidates those operations in a location that can be used for both in-shore and offshore testing, and was selected after fifty-one sites in eight states were considered and rejected.
The X-Site is efficient but not fancy. A long, low steel-sided building with high overhead doors faces the water and floating docks with 49 slips at floating docks. There's a trailer launch ramp and a set-up for launching with a Travel Lift or fork truck. Covered storage racks will hold 68 boats, and the racks are secured with steel cables to help secure them in case of a hurricane. In fact, they entire complex is designed so that the staff can prepare to withstand a hurricane in a matter of hours.
The 27-person X-Site crew includes 12 test-boat drivers, many ex-military from one of several bases in the area. There are five test courses the drivers can use in the more protected waters of St. Andrew Bay, or in the Gulf of Mexico through St. Andrew Pass. The total range is about 40 miles. Unlike the Tennessee River near Bridgeport, the waters off Panama City can be teaming with recreational boaters. Mercury drivers are especially wary of rental pontoons and watercraft, frequently piloted by non-boaters. The Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force conduct operations in the area (the Navy's prestigious dive school and the SEALs hold drills in the bay, for example) and the X-Site staff has learned how not to get in the way. Mercury is also conducting some projects for the military. I saw an OptiMax test motors running on Jet-A fuel, for example.
Yeah, it's Florida, which sounds like good duty if you are stationed in Fond du Lac. But in the past year, weather extremes at the X-Site ranged from a low of 28 degrees to a high of 98 degrees. Only high winds and lightning keeps the test drivers off the water, and that happened just four times in the past year. Test-driver candidates need to be weatherproof and have good communications skills, because after each shift they have to complete a report on their observations of the engine they are testing.
Each test boat is also equipped with a data logger that can be programmed remotely from Mercury engineering in Fond du Lac. That data is available almost immediately after each shift, so an engineering team can monitor the status of each validation motor on a daily basis. The test boats range from inflatable dinghies to a bright-yellow, 40-foot Velocity that can take four six-cylinder Verado or OptiMax motors on a transom reinforced with quarter-inch aluminum plate. For most validation testing, the drivers are asked to run as fast as conditions will allow, but they are also asked to complete duty-cycle testing, such as trolling or hundreds of simulated water skiing starts. Each day, the driver must complete eight engine starts, 25 forward-to-reverse shifts, and 25 cycles through the trim range. It's a job that requires a real love of being on the water.
Located a short drive from Chattanooga, Tenn., the Yamaha test center opened in 2000, and an expansion was just completed in 2007.
Editor's Note: Charles Plueddeman is the editor at large for Boating, the nation's largest boating magazine.
