Lake rat Skater

I'm willing to be that the 400s go over 1000hrs pretty easily. The lowers on the other hand will need attention more often, especially in environments where they leave and reenter the water often. I know of a few 300 and 350s that are over 2000 hrs.

chris21hope

Since when did offshore boaters care about economy? I understand the benefit of having huge maintenance intervals and good gas mileage, but I'd take a pair of blue motors any day, even if I have to pay more for them. They sound better, they look better, and they're what give offshore boats the 'wow' factor.

......just my two cents.....

Nate5.0

We all have differnt two cents is all

racinfast002

Moved to salt water, sold my go fast, shopping CC's. Now I don't expect a CC to have nearly the performance of my old ride, but for the salt environment, I'm all about the ease of maintenance/care that go along with an outboard. Was sick of being overly paranoid about roaching out my intercoolers in salt water.

risco

another thing to consider is 3x or 4x outboards boats if you do happen to have a problem with a engine just trim it up and get back on plane and continue on.i also 2nd ive seen 1800-2500 300 verdos for sale a bunch so unless. i would guess 1000hr would be no issue.

WARPARTY36

Another consideration is the cockpit space. Eggbeaters on the back open up a lot of seating and storage space.

LAriverratt

yep...look at the outerlimits 41! going 105 and all that room. not sure about what's in the cabin to get to 105 either. the new 418 OB skater will be one to look at as well whenever one's built.

hustlerguy

It's different boating styles.
For salt water out boards are probably the way to go. Unless you want to go fast, over 100 mph consistently. Outboard 400's are not gonna do that and give the acceleration of a qc4 or blown i/o.
If your looking to haul 7-10 people around I don't care if it's a 41 o/l or whatever brand sport boat or a center console your not gonna run 95 mph with all those people on board. And if you do is it really safe?

Will the outboards break? For sure. Are they more reliable than a i/o? Take the technology in a qc4 motor turn it down to 500 hp and bet they run a long azz time in fresh water also.

Nate5.0

Most people are not running 100mph at all.

Those are the top 5% folk. So that stands true for folks like your self and a select few but you certainly are not the norm or the mass of power boaters.

hustlerguy

Everyone I meet at the poker runs is running 100+... smiling.

I can see the draw by many people like I said especially salt water.
Honestly the vast majority of performance boats now a days are running 70-85 mph with a stout single i/o or a mildly built Twin engine i/o. There are more and more 100 mph ish boats than you give credit.
To do 70-85 in a cc your going to need 3 or 4 of them and if you got 6+ people in the boat it's still not going to go that fast, especially not safely.
To do that in a sport boat like the o/l 41 with 400's will do those speeds with 6 people but not the same acceleration.
In my mind the jury is still out. I remember when triple mild i/o motors were the hot ticket to go fast not Twin big hp engines. As long as you had good motors and good maintenance it worked ok, but in the end Twin engine boats won out and triple engine boats became undesirable. I just wonder how this craze of 400 outboard triple and quad engine boats will play out.