As someone who made the move from gas to diesel, let me share what my goals were ( are ) and a bit of my experience since the switch.

As some will know, I went from a 50 V Nor Tech that had trip gas 850's ( yellow / orange boat in my avitar ) to another 50 V NT with trip Yanmar 480 diesels's ( blue boat in my avitar ).
In the gas boat I would have a range of 200 miles with a 400 gal tank or .5 miles per gallon. With the same 400 gal tank in the diesel boat I can go 400 + miles or 1 mile per gal.
In the gas boat I would be rebuilding all 3 engines after 225 to 250 hrs at a cost of $ 60 - $70,000 +, if I did not break anything. This became almost an annual expense with the amount of boating I do. The diesel boat now has almost 300 hrs on it, and a rebuild is no where in sight. I am hoping and expecting in the 4 years I will own this boat, that there will not be any rebuild cost. Maybe some sort of freshening on the eventual sale but maybe not either.
In summary I have cut my annual operating and maintenace costs by a huge amount, the boat is much more reliable, I can go further distances opening up new boating destinations that I could not think of with the gas boat and I can still do poker runs and finish ahead of 1/3 of the pack.
What did I give up? I can only run in the mid 70's instead of 100 MPH but I can do that all day long without breaking.
Not for most maybe but works very well for me.
I should add that if there was a performance diesel option available to me that would push my boat along at 90 MPH I would take it in a heartbeat. With the savings I described in annual op and maint costs, a person can easily justify putting more into the initial purchase.

Yes these pictures do not reflect the larger turbo's now in place :drink:

Intake weight ??

Ribs sound goooooooooood :eek:


Jon

When I was on the boat at Party On The Pond with that engine in it, it idled around like it had a Merc 330. That engine is pretty impressive.

3 - 850's as they exist now would not fit in my engine compartment and if they did would sink the ship with the weight. I expect you mean if some of the current light weight offerings could somehow be cranked up to 850 HP what would happen to efficiency and longevity? I expect they would start to look like a gas engine where reliabilty becomes an issue with parts failing and the economies no longer being there. There is always a trade off it seems. BTW, I would think that just 2 - 850's would give me the speed myself, Jassman and others are looking for.

No to 2 or multi speed trannys.

Bob

Wildman,

I give you the facts on what were the reasons people raced or wanted to race diesels years ago.

Bob, is right on all accounts, last longer, more miles to gal. Bob's points are so true, if you were in a true old school offshore race I wonder if the speeds we see today would still be there, if the boats raced 175 miles in open ocean in the rough and everything else could we have 130 mph, 150 mph - probably not, they would down in the lower 100's at most again????

Look at diesel vs gas in fuel to make 1 hp, a diesel usally burns about .33 lbs of fuel per Hp/HR. A gas engine generally
.4 to .5 lbs hp/hr so right there no matter what for equal Hp the diesel burns less fuel.

We looked to racing our Navistar & later Cummins diesels not because they were better but like Buzzi, there was a old loop hole in UIM 1 & 2 rules that were carried over here to APBA that had not been updated to reflect how much more power people were getting out of diesels compared to when they were written.

The old diesel rules were from the time when people like Roger Penske wanted diesels in offshore raceboats. That old cubic rule meant you could out Hp a gas boat now, that in part drove performance diesels back in the 80's.

The other factor was a more practical one where when a race started a gas boat was heavy with fuel and therefore would not run wide open (remember the races were all 150 miles plus). The diesel boats would run wide open from the get go and try to make the gas boats chase them down, to stay within striking distance the gas boats ran harder than they wanted and if you look at the older races almost 50% plus of all the boats that started did not finish!

So, yes diesel dependablity was a factor but after the rules changed and you needed to make more powerful diesels the dpendability factor was not so great.

As far as Banks goes, everyone that read what was posted here and saw the pictures should have enough sense to know like Ray says this is just Banks being a great marketer. Banks is no different than manufacturers going to any other car show, they build concept or racing product to bring and get some buzz going?

At a dry weight of 3500-4000lbs per side I would think two of them would create a bit of a problem as well. Your boat is pretty darn big so I don't know about you, but being 5+ feet long and around 4 feet tall would mean "packaging" issues for many.

Seatek makes 850-925 HP diesels that burn less fuel than the same HP gas engine. You also get nearly 2000 ft/lb of torque with it. Yes they are heavier. They also have a 1000 hr TBO.

But in a boat like Bob's, he could run 2 Seatek 825-950 and have more HP with the same engine weight (less overall weight with the third drive not needed). Throw in some 2 speeds and you really got something going.

I agree. I should have more clear that when I said putting 2 - 850's in my boat would do the job, I was referring to one of these phantom super duper lightweight diesel engines that we all dream of but do not exist yet.

Bob

Thanks for putting that in terms that we can all understand, Joe...... well most of us anyway. LOL

:eek: You are correct,......and that is the beauty of the system seriously over looked :drink:



Jon