Okay. I'm back again and hating it...

Went over yesterday to Crappie fish and scout for Teal. The 2001 Mercury ELPTO 40 HP fired up finally after I realized the kill switch was on. And, as usual, it smoked a little and I took off to scout first.

However, at first stop I heard the solid beep emanating from under the motor cowl and looked in the oil tank (unscrewed the cap) and couldn't see oil. As I carry some on board, I went ahead and filled it to the top BUT I am not sure if this was the first time that I used the 2-cycle synthetic oil or not - had been using the Walmart brand..

In any case, and this is where it gets foggy for me, either the sensor continued to beep or went off again fairly quickly BUT came back on shortly thereafter.

I Googled it just to make sure what a solid beep was, as compared to intermittent beeps, and confirmed it was oil related. Now I wasn't sure what was going on and called friends but no one has experience with motors that mix themselves, and, I didn't think about whether there are issues with mixing regular 2-cycle with synthetic...

Thinking it was maybe a sensor issue, a piece of junk in oil reservoir, or the like, I would run it a short distance but not too far as the beep would come on and didn't want to harm engine. Kept checking the water coming out for temperature but it never got above warm.

This went on every time I wanted to use motor for the most part. Someone suggested to open the oil reservoir tank cap and I noticed that when I accelerated the motor, oil would squirt out. Not sure what that means...

Didn't think about it till this afternoon but the times I restarted the motor to go a short distance, with or without the beep, I can't recall it smoking at all AND that happened quite a bit in past.

HOWEVER, before I got back to the Ramp I could smell what I normally would smell AND I had vapors behind the motor BUT it had gotten slightly foggy last night by the time I made it back...the trolling motor up front went out 10 days ago but I was using a transom mount now - and that could have been the heavy moisture in the air...

At one point I was going to put oil in the gas tank too but decided not to.

A friend today suggested the motor was gravity feed on oil but not sure. He mentioned it might also be getting pressure from motor to "push" the oil into a mix but neither of us are knowledgable....

So here I am, the Eve before Teal season opens here in Illinois and Crappie are on fire, and my boat motor is doing this.

BY THE WAY, this is a different boat than the post I made about a Steering cable. It's a Lowe Olympic 1656 that I use for hunting AND fishing.

So, first the starter went out.

Then the new MK Powerdrive V2 quits.

And now this.

Thoughts?

Prayers?

Laughter?

Suicide Hotline number???

(Just kidding about last one).

Thank you in advance.