2000 Excalibur 26 potential Buy
 

I stumbled across a local Excalibur 26 for sale. It's a 2000 powered by a Volvo 7.4 Gi. 400-ish hours with many recent services, including gimble bearing, bellows and fluids. Owner seems fastidious and open-checkbook regarding maintenance. I have no idea what the options would have been. It does have selectable exhaust (Captain's Call, maybe?).

I have never owned a Volvo and am a bit gun-shy of "unknowns." I have been out on boats with duo-prop power and was impressed the immediate up--on-plane and lack of torque steer issues. My impression is that Volvo drives are rock-solid if well-maintained, but expensive to repair when something goes wrong. Probably not well-suited to performance mods. Is that an accurate "nutshell" take on Volvos? Having owned many big-block Mercruisers, I'm very comfortable with the engine itself.

With that all said, a couple of questions: what kind of cruise speed should I expect, and top speed (I'm not afraid of a W.O.T. burst, but I like 3200-3400 rpm for cruising)? I'm guessing 32 mph cruise, 55 top. I'd love to be surprised by a bit more.

Also, the ask is $24k. Does this seem reasonable? I wasn't really looking for this boat - it kind of found me, so I'm totally out of touch with potential value!

TIA.

I have no idea about the value of that boat. I do know it's not a very fast hull. So, I'd forget about trying to make the boat fast. If you are looking for a boat to enjoy, it might be worth a look.

I can't speak for the boat, but I have had that 7.4Gi DP in a Cobalt and it is a rock solid combo. If maintained, as the owner has stipulated, I would expect it to go another 400 hours easy. The DP is reliable, tough, and behind that 310HP mill will also last forever if the oil is changed yearly. That combo is not expensive to work on provided your shop has tools if needed to dig into the DP. Only caveat....don't touch the motor. There are no HP gains to be had beyond stock.

I don't think anyone here can speculate on the performance #'s unless they have had that setup. Why not just ask the owner? My 7.4Gi/DP was pushing a 22 foot Cobalt cuddy and it never went faster than 53 mph.