Two Fountains I maintain for a customer. Why he has two of them, I'll never know! First one is a 47' Lightening with 3 x 900 hp supercharged 541 cu in engines with Mercury #6 drives. (That's me in the white shirt going on a water test after rebuilding the engines) The other is a 42' Lightning 2 x 575 hp fuel injected/supercharged 502 cu in with Bravo 1 drives. Mercury Racing recommends freshening the heads every 100 hours and rebuilding the bottom end every 200 hours....and you guys thought Ferrari's had a bad reputation for maintenance. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
In a word, absoulutey!! Boat engines run at high power for a high percentage of time. In a car an engine runs at high power for a few seconds and then cools back off. In a boat high power can be run for hours on end. Material stress rupture life is a big function of temperature for things like exhaust valves. We figure as a rule of thumb, a 25 degree hotter temperaure in a part like that cuts the life in half. Run an exhaust valve 100 degrees hotter and the life is 1/16 of what it was before. Easy to see how exhaust valve life in a car engine is in the thousands of hours, as noted above you do the heads in a high performance boat every hundred hours and the parts are a lot more expensive because of the higher material requirements. Boat engines are a lot more like airplane engines in terms of duty cycle and the costs of building an engine for that kind of service are a lot higher than a car engine. You can marinize a car engine for light duty work, like in a ski boat, but that's a lot different than a high speed power boat like this.... About how much do you figure for for engine maintenance on a per engine, per hour basis, and how many hours per year do you generally figure for usage? I knew the life was short, but I didn't realize that these engines had that short a time between overhauls, but if you do drop a valve it trashes the engine and the cost of that is huge too. Just curious as to how the people involved see it.
I know Mercury Racing charges around 26k per engine to freshen them up, IF the owner sends them there. An engine freshen for me (depending on exactly what the engine is) is roughly 3500.00 plus parts and R&R labor. The R&R labor is pretty intensive, especially if the drives have to come off, or if the boat has triples- not much room between them. I would figure the #6 drives weigh around 500 lbs each. The 47' boat came to me with no compression on one bank of the RH motor. Burnt two pistons, and torched the block and head about 1/4" deep between those two cylinders. The boat had 109 hours on it. So pulling the heads off at 100 hours as recommended may have saved it. All the head gaskets on all 3 engines were burnt or almost ready to burn through.
My old Cig Cafe' Racer. Twin 500's. Nice and reliable. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
When I said my old Cig, I meant age, not that I don't still have the boat. She is for sale though Image Unavailable, Please Login
That's interesting. Is there any particular reason that boats are ever-so-slightly faster in salt water than fresh water? All the best, Andrew.
Boats are slightly faster in salt water due to having a higher draft. The increased buoyancy of salt water will make the boat float a little higher (higher draft), resulting in less "drag" underway. The affect on speed is minimal, but none-the-less exists. Tim
That is in Lagos, Nigeria...coming back from the beach. Pic of beach and the other is a pic next to a predator 108. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Note those twin screw blowers on the top Andrew....yea, they are different! Zul starts out with 800 - 100 horsepower and goes UP from there!
Hi guys I have no Ferrari at this time but I have had a few over the years and sold them awhile back when I bought this to go crusing in 96. I still have it and will be out this weekend since it's gonna be too hot to cruise the canyons in my little rocket pig... Custom built Rob Ladd design 61 ft with a 8 ft draft wing keel. I've rigged it for single handed sailing and have punched through swells at 14.8 knts reaching... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
a taste of torque. Now waiting for Allanlamebo to come along and tell me I took pictures of some other guys boat... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
