I have seen that during the early 80s there were boats around with twin turbos. From what I understand, the majority of them were done by Gale Banks. My question is, why aren't they used at all anymore? I would love to do it when my motor gets tired but I never see any of them so it has me kind of curious.

I remember reading an article called "power brokers" in an old powerboat mag. One of the big builders, cannot remember who, said that turbos will make a comeback. He said that they were not so great back then, but modern computers have made it possible to make them just as reliable as any blower motor.

Tommy @ Chief , he has just built a pair of twin Turbo engines and from what i heard they are freakn awsome.

Tommy has a few boats out there with them in the bilge, a friend of mine has a pair in a new 43 nortech, awesome package

Back during the turbos popularity, big CID was just a dream. No block existed beyond the GM 427 truck block. The turbos on a 496 could make some power. The big challenge was meeting Coast Guard regs on water jacketed exhaust. The shields were unreliable and water cooled turbo housings totally defeat the purpose- you need all the heat you're drawing out with cooling water. Mercruiser did some neat things with turbos and even had a set of race motors that made mean power but the APBA woudn't let them run them. Today, a Roots blower is just so much simpler to set up and run, plus they have big bottom end that the turbos never did- some of those turbo boats were impossible to get on plane. Toss in the Lysholm blowers and the various other offerings and turbos are even less attractive. For max horsepower, the turbo is hard to beat. There's no reason they can't be used on boats- the technology is decades old. Some of the new tech even offsets some of those old liabilities- but you still have a much simpler setup with positive-displacement systems.

As was said, Tommy @ Chief. When I was in FLA in 07', My girlfriend and I stopped by Chief to check them out, they gave us a really nice walk around. We were invited up to look inside Broken Arrow, a 47 Apache, which if I remember, had fresh triple twin turbos. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what a bad @ss boat! My girlfriend even thought Broken Arrow was insane, and she could care less about that stuff.

I have heard that turbo motors can go much longer between rebuilds . It's funny to me seeing every one of these exotic poweboats running the same Mercury 1075's when they have to be rebuilt every 25 or 50 hours. Regardless, it's 20 or 25k a pop for a rebuild.

Turbos are easier on crank, rods, pistons, etc. I have wondered the same thing myself.... why not more of them around, especially on race boats. I have a small block chevy with one 106mm turbo in my drag car and it makes over 2200hp with almost no maintenance at all. Now like Chris was saying, it is a more complicated and expensive (upfront anyway) to install and tune.... but once you get it close, it would make rediculous power and be reliable.

The biggest problem would be breaking drives once the boost started coming on hard.

Brummett Marine
310 N. Altadena Dr.
Pasadena, CA 91107
Tel: (626) 792-6410
Fax: (626) 792-6410

!!