Outboard servicing and repairs
Ferry Marine is an engine workshop in Livingston, twenty minutes from Edinburgh. We service and repair outboard engines of every size — a 2.5hp auxiliary, a 425hp V10, and everything in between — along with Yanmar inboard diesels.
The marine engines we work on
We're an authorised dealer for Suzuki, Mercury and Yanmar, and our marine engineers are factory trained on all three. That's the sales side.
The workshop is wider than that. We service and repair:
- Suzuki outboards — the full DF range
- Mercury outboards — FourStroke and Verado
- Mariner outboards — Mercury-built, so the parts and the know-how are already here
- Yamaha outboards
- Tohatsu outboards
- Yanmar inboard diesels
Most of our work is on current-generation four-strokes — digital throttle and shift, engine management, and the larger V6 and V10 outboards that need the manufacturer's diagnostics rather than somebody's best guess. That is what the workshop is equipped for, and it's why boats come to us from well beyond Edinburgh.
If your engine isn't on the list, phone anyway. We'd rather tell you yes or no in two minutes than have you tow a boat across Scotland for nothing.
What outboard servicing and repair covers
Thirty-five years on the same bench, factory-trained technicians, and the manufacturer diagnostics to go with them. You don't have to have bought the boat engine from us.
Bring it in and we'll tell you honestly what it needs and what it will take to repair it. We don't run a parts counter. So we can't sell you a water pump kit to take away — but everything we fit is the correct part for your engine, ordered through the manufacturer. If your boat engine is past economical repair, we also supply and fit new outboards.
Scheduled outboard servicing
Annual and interval services to the manufacturer's schedule — oils, filters, plugs, gearbox oil, anodes, impeller and water pump, fuel system, and a proper look at everything else while it's on the bench. Service history recorded and stamped, which matters when you come to sell.
Outboard engine diagnostics
Won't start, won't rev, overheats, alarms, dies at half throttle. We plug into the engine where the engine allows it and work it out from there. Most of what comes through the door as 'it's knackered' turns out to be fuel, water or wiring.
Outboard motor repair
Outboard motor repair from the small and annoying to the serious: water pumps and impellers, lower unit and gearbox work, powerhead and cylinder work, gear selection and shift problems, trim and tilt, starters, charging and wiring faults, corrosion and salt damage, propeller and skeg damage.
Submersion and salt-water recovery
If it's been under, time matters more than anything else. Phone us before you do anything else to it.
Marine engine servicing — bring it to us, or we'll come to your fleet
Private owners: the workshop
Bring the boat on its trailer or the engine off the transom, whichever is easier. There's room to leave it with us, easy trailer access straight off the M8, and the work is done here where the tools, the diagnostics and the parts are. We don't do call-outs to marinas or moorings for private boats — the honest reason is that half the jobs can't be finished at the berth, and nobody wants to pay for two visits.
Commercial operators: on site
If you run boats for a living — a marina, a sailing school, a tour or charter operator, a club with a fleet of RIBs — we'll come to you and work round your season instead of ours. Fleet servicing scheduled in the winter, or whenever your boats are actually off the water. Talk to us about a schedule rather than a booking.
Yanmar inboard servicing and repair
We're one of very few Yanmar marine dealers north of the border, and we service and repair Yanmar marine diesels as well as supplying and installing them. Servicing to schedule, raw water and cooling systems, injectors and fuel systems, gearbox and stern gear, heat exchangers, diagnostics and fault-finding.
Inboard work is usually a longer conversation than an outboard service, so phone rather than use the form and tell us the boat, the engine and what it's doing.
Winterisation and recommissioning
Laying up for the winter properly is the cheapest servicing you will ever buy. Fuel stabilised, water drained, cooling system flushed, gearbox oil changed before it sits, and the engine stored in a state it can wake up from. Come the spring we recommission it, check it over and get it running before you need it.
It's also the sensible time to get anything else done. A gearbox seal or a tired water pump is a much cheaper job in November than it is on the first warm Saturday of the season, when every workshop in central Scotland is full.
Book winterisation early. Everyone in Scotland wants the same fortnight in October, and the boats that get laid up on time are the ones that start first in April.
Book your boat engine in !
Tell us the engine — make, horsepower and roughly how old, and the serial number if you can get to it — and what it's doing or not doing. We'll tell you whether it's a service, a repair or a conversation, and when we can take it.