SHHH!! No body is suppose to know.

Welcome to the site Saleen. This is the best place for offshore info.

Great thread
 

This is a good read.

I appreciate most peoples opinions being based in reality and backing it up with decent economic understanding.

My question is this.

Why is everyone saying start off with a 600-700hp LS?
Why not flood the "Joe boater" market with very affordable (Cheap!) 350hp LS based marine engines? You guys can make those by the hundreds with a little margin, right? Get people into the platform, let grass roots modifications take hold - Boom, people are addicted to the LS marine platform.

A $2g a day cocaine habit doesent start off with someone saying "Im going to spend $2g today on coke! Decision made!"

http://www.crusaderengines.com/Products/6_0.html

That is already out there, although it is not being marketed to performance boaters. I would think you could start with 400-420 cube ls3 heads NA and out perform the merc 525 at a lessor cost would be a start. But on the re power side any decent marine engine builder can start with stock 502 and do that for pretty decent price.

The big kicker with this is going to be new sales,(which seems to rebounding) You will need to package it with a drive, that's not too tough you can become an imco dealer. Next comes service/warranty network, good luck with that. Guys that have been around along time still have a hard time getting there product in new boats, now imagine if you are joe engine builder, that has no name recognition.

You could focus on re powers, so again you are back higher horsepower stuff. (If its a re power that's not high hp, you can bet either mercury is getting the business, or its the cheapest possible solution.)

There is no easy in, but good luck with what ever you decide.

I have a few of brand new these sitting around the shop.

http://www.fordracingparts.com/parts...KeyField=12378

We convert them to EFI running MoTeC M84 and a four barrel style throttle body.

I have been tempted, I must admit. I just can't get excited about building the manifolds. Then I start thinking they need a cam change, then after that the effective compression ratio would probably be too high.

But I keep walking past them and keep wondering. Sure would be nice to get all that weight out of the back of the boat with those two BBC's back there.

Go on, flame away and call me an idiot. I've heard it before and sometimes they were right :D

I remember Tyler Crockett converted some Nascar engines for a Sunsation several years ago. The story was in Hot Boat or Powerboat. It seemed like the boat ran well. You could contact him and find out exactly how well it worked out.

Do it. Sounds like a cool project.

A few years ago I looked at a race boat that had 2 bad engines. I was told the owner, when setting up the boat, went to the local GM dealer bought 2 502 crate motors. He stated merc 500's were nothing special. They swapped heads and cams out to get 550ish hp. The boat ran 4 races then the motors were done. From what I heard both engines had oil stavation in the higher sustained rpms and poof. Maybe 500's are not that special I said but they typically don't blow up in 5 hours.
This gave me another small lesson. Is there more work put into marine engines in not only clearances but also oil flow? I'm no expert but I would say yes. Just my 2cents.

no offense but i hear these stories all the time. cant use "non-marine" engines they'll blow up. such as your story above. and to contradict that i have seen merc 525 blow up in the same amount of time. how many times you hear about "gaurdian mode". even seen a few sterlings pop too. will say we ran a set of 750 supercat motor for 8 races, so yes sterling know how to build motors that last. i would question someone who has a car dealer modify race boat motors ?????????

theres way too many variables to make an "apples to apples" comparison. i run a set of engines built by a builder that mostly does dirt track and some drag. i have had no failures that i can point to because of tolerance or because some other reason relating to him not normally building marine race engines. our biggest problem was component failure - water pump impellers, that was setup by a marine race boat rigger.

back to "marine" engines, you guys really have to divide up the type of boats as per engines.
would a low compression nascar type small cube in work, well sure in 30' cat or a 29 OL vee. not in so much in a 40' fountain with full berth and bathrm

nothing replaces cubic inches for torque, and the only way to work around that is forced induction, via blower or now turbos.

and too reiterate i see very few poker run boats that actually push their equipment to anything near race conditions and or even extended wot running.

would be interesting to take a poll of engines before and after the miami poker run and see how many have issues, what issues and how many get rebuilt even w/o failures

I guess I should have made my point more clear, relative to the original poster regarding his shop considering building marine engines.

Those aluminum block 427 Windsors are $13,600 full retail price direct from Ford Racing. Shop around FR dealers and they are even cheaper.
No doubt even though they have forged internals, its not the high end stuff. But its not a cast crank and OEM production crank / rods / valvetrain either.

So even if we assume clearances etc are different for sustained high load high rpm than a "street car" engine, which is always entirely possible, there are still a lot of parts in this pile from Ford Racing that I'd think would be more than good enough for the average weekend guy like many (most?) of us are.

Boat racing with these things? I doubt they'd live long, I agree. But in my little 74mph weekend tug boat? They'd likely last forever (relative term). Chit, maybe I'd get lucky and get into the high 70's too for short bursts. I'm no ocean racer - and many of us aren't.

So to the OP's point, who is the customer for marine engines for his shop?
Independent shops would struggle to match Ford Racing pricing building this exact engine as an example. Different clearances, whatever, just look at part and labor costs. So I'm not their new marine engine customer when I look at all brand new all aluminum 600HP engines with forged internals, solid roller cams, and valvetrains that laugh at 7000rpm for under $14k. Even if I have to pull it apart and build it into a "marine" engine. You could spend the $14k in parts alone - the SAME parts - for an all aluminum engine. I have yet to find an engine building business who believes they could build these "crate" engines and sell them for the same money and make a profit.

So that leaves the engine shop with race engine and real high performance marine engine customers. Lets be honest, who are those customers going to go to? Trusted brand name marine engine builders in the industry.

Maybe I'm over generalizing. But when I buy real race car engines I call Roush Yates. I don't call an independent engine shop (no offense) or buy a crate engine from the FR catalog. I wince a bit writing the $60k+ check, I'm not gonna lie. But I trust them, they are very very good at what they do, and I pay for that. I'd bet real boat racers will do the same in the marine industry.
The rest of the time I'm looking for more affordability, like most other weekend warrior boaters. I'm not a boat racer, I'm a weekend warrior nobody. And there are already a mountain of more affordable engine options for little guys like me.

I just can't see a business case or market opportunity at either end that isn't already flooded with quality options.