Question on Big SeaRays....
 

A friend of mine is looking at two different 400 Searays one is a 1995 or 96 with 454's and over 500 hours, the other is a 1997 with 502's. I guess the 97 only has about 250 hours and is cleaner but it's $30,000.00 more. What is everyone take on these????

I said go with the 502's but he said he heard somewhere that they have more problems than the 454's??

I still think I would go with the 502's with less hours because chances are that your going to be able to get at least a season or two, or heck even more before a rebuild. With the 454's in a couple of years they will have 200 more hours and 700 hours sounds like a lot!!!

I would also think that the 502's would help the resale in a few years?? Right? or do people in boats like these not care???

if you wanna hekp with resale look at a sunseeker, some concept but cooler and they hodl theier value better :D

www.sunseekerny.com if he interested drop me an e-mail

-Brendan

A boat that and heavy needs diesels.
I'd take neither.

Storm, I hear ya, but they will be keeping it on LOTO and Diesel is kinda hard to come by. I don't think they would be comfortable with a diesel boat.

Puder, they are looking in the 150k range.

You can't even touch a Sunseeker for anywhere close to that, can ya?

Brad, Scott Myers 40 is for sale at LOTO

The 40 is honestly too big for gas motors. If you gotta go gas, then the Horizons are the better choice. Horizons are closed cooled and injected. I know of no problems with the Horizons. They came in 454 and 502 flavors. The 454's in the '95 will be garden variety oval port station wagon motors. By all means lean towards the 502's.

But it's going to be underpowered either way.

Diesel makes so much more sense in those boats.

quite possibley

i know of one 48 superhawk that might be available for those kind of numbers.

if they can go a little higher (aroudn 200) 40 portofino with might be possible.

drop me an e-mail got one other option for ya too :D

yup, what he said.

Brian, What year is Scott's?? Any info on it??? It might be one that they are looking at???

Keep all the info flowing!! He's in Dallas for the Big 12 and will be back Sunday, I'll let him know then!!

I wouldn't worry too much about being under powered in that boat unless it is important to the new owner to go 5- 10mph faster than a comparable boat. 454's for 30k less would be my choice. They should go for 1500 hrs maybe more but 40' is big. Look at all the 39 SRys with gas and they still sell well. I do agree diesel is the best but with that comes the extra cost (which will be re-cooped some at resale). Your not hurting anything at all with 454's except 'ye ego some. Kick back and enjoy the ride. :cool:

don't get too caught up in the gas/diesel issues unless you'r going do a lot of off shore cruising. The real issue on the larger Sea Rays is the the coring in the bottoms.

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...+ray+stringers

Here is a recent thread. He just purchased after looking at 12 SR

Believe it or not you will have a better chance of selling that boat at LOTO with gas motors in it than diesels. Diesel is becoming much more available at the lake, but the demand is not there in the used market.

I agree with the post above and certainly try to get one with Horizons in it, but I don't think they were around in '95 or '97. I could be wrong, but I think '98 or '99 was the first year.

502's are very rare in that boat especially at the lake, and I really don't think they would help resale value that much at LOTO. There is not that much performance difference between the two.

Good Luck

I had the 454 Horizon's, no problem, burned a lot of gas trying to run it at planeing speeds. Friend has twin Cats, economy better, but very S L O W ! I was bored to death and dumped it. I was also uncomfortable with the wakes I left with the 40 on a lake...

Thats is why most of them plow around here at the lake:(

It's a 92............loaded 7.4's completely gone through, llike new. 126K it's at the Moorings. 2 way and I'll Give you his #

Go with the 454's and save the 30K for when you have to repower with diesels anyway....

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who owns Sea Rays. He just bought a 54' with twin Caterpillar 3196's. He has a 1997 370 for sale with 454's asking price 137,900. 440 hours with $25,000 in electronics.

He told me he would NOT go with gas motors above a 370. He said that a 400 with gas motors is too much boat. He has owned Sea Rays for a long time and knows his chit.

If your buddy is interested in the boat or wants to talk to someone who knows a lot about Sea Rays PM me and I will give you his contact info. The boat is located in Hilton Head, SC.

burt,

Diesels were slow? Are you kidding?

On a 40' cruiser, diesels will at LEAST match the WOT speed of the biggest stock gas motor choice, while providing an economical "fast cruise" speed of 75% of the WOT speed while the gas variant won't even plane the hull till close to 4000 rpm which puts cruise speed way down in the mid teens.

Unless your friend's mfr allowed a grossly mismatched (small) diesel option for his hull, he must have had something wrong with it.

* displacement hulls excepted from the above discussion, since a displacement hull's speed is pretty much a factor of the beam and length ratio as opposed to how much muscle it's packing *

I think diesel cruise rate is 90-95% wide open throttle and generally gas is 75% WOT.

FunHome,

I just emailed you.............

...if the wife wants a cruiser...this is the one and only one I would consider...for obvious reasons...i never priced one though...has anyone?

...it's called a FOUNTAIN...does like 65 and cruise at 40 something is the same as a Sea Ray going 25mph

mpg wise that is

McCollinstn, I was about to respond but Downtown 42 said exactly my point, the diesel was run at +90 % of max. I think the 40 'dancer is an unbeatable, luxury, condo on water, just boring...

i'll stick with my opinion, and it only goes for LOTO, but diesel is not the way to go. A lake like any of the Great Lakes or certainly offshore diesel is the way to go no doubt about it.

Resale value will not be as high when you compare it to initial cost if you go with diesels and again this is only at LOTO. Now if your friend wants to try and sell the boat at another part of the country when he is finished with the boat then so be it. Many of the brokers at the lake make it because they can find large Sea Ray's in other parts of the country for cheap, bring them to the lake, and sell them for a lot more than they paid for them. This is primarily because the gas engines in a 40' Sea Ray on Lake Michigan has very little resale value, but on LOTO it is highly sought after.

This was already mentioned, but if you are not in the main part of LOTO good luck finding diesel. I agree they are slower with gas, less economical, less range, etc..., but in '04 on LOTO my opinion is to save the money and go with gas. What really my opinion would be to do is go elsewhere and find a 40 with gas in it, and have it shipped to the lake. From my experience you could have it shipped and still save money. Check out waht like Skipper Bud's in Chicago would sell an older 40 with gas in it and then check out what Port Arrowhead would sell it for. Most cases the Chicago boat would be cheaper since it has gas, and you could have it shipped and still save money.

There is not enough room at the lake to justify diesels when you can get away with gas. Just my opinion.

I think that it`s priced right at 700k.

speed, where on loto u at

Sounds less than a 48 SeaRay and double the speeeeed

Check out my Sea Ray less then 15 hours on the motors new everything, Diesel is the absolut olny way to go, I get 35mph out of mine. Also with the size of the tanks, he would only be filling it up 4 times a year
Tom
http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...threadid=68765

what about a 97 45' wellcraft w/502's? Should be in better condition since it's on a lift. (smaller wake too I hope if he comes down the BN)

http://spring.phpwebhosting.com/~oza...w=detail&id=47

downtown,

i haven't changed my profile, but i live full time in Overland Park(Kansas City), Kansas. at the lake i am about a mile from the grand glaize bridge.

barry

Gentlemen,

I am not trying to tell you at what MAX speed a diesel can cruise at: I am telling you that a diesel at "long range cruise setting" will be normally pushing the craft at 75% of max WOT speed (take note that this is DIFFERENT than 75% of max RPM).

And while a diesel is an iron anvil, a Class Rating E recreational performance diesel is still limited to a duty cycle of 30%, with WOT operation at full rated power intended to not exceed 8% of the operational time.

A diesel will happily run for hours and hours at a stretch at 85% of WOT, but the last 15% is not intended to be used as a "cruise" setting in a E-rated diesel (A's, B's, and C's are entirely another story).

And while 85% power is fully within the acceptable range of cruise speed, most guys still prefer to pull back some for a little better economy.

My point is that a diesel in a 40' express will cruise effortlessly at 25mph, and top out at 35mph while returning 50% better fuel economy than the gas selection that cannot plane the boat at a normal cruise power setting, and tops out at 27-28 mph.

Dudes, I've GOT a diesel. This isn't heresay (mines a 370 that weighs loaded around 18,000).
A friend has a 42 Dancer with 454's and it TOPS OUT at 21mph. Gets less than 1/2mpg trying to plane. Is useful only for slow moving (and at those slow speeds a houseboat is a better value for lake usage).

I cruise at 30mph most of the time. I top out at 38 fully loaded. I've got fuel sheets from the day it arrived and can show you that I have a 750-hour history of over 1.3 mpg. And at 26mph it gets 1.5mpg.

I can leave in the morning and travel the 230 miles to Green Turtle bay in 8 hours and wave at all the gas docks. And I don't even have to feel like I am abusing my powerplants.

A 370 with gas runs decent. When I ordered mine, it was the 5th one they had built with diesels, and I believe there are less than 20 of them total. I will never regret the decision to go diesel and can't emphasize how well I have liked it.

A gas boat labors coming onto plane. A diesel ticks off a few seconds spooling up the turbos, and then you'd better make sure everybody is sitting down. Pow. Under normal acceleration, a diesel just bulldogs its way onto plane with no sense of struggle whatsoever.

I drove a gas 370 in the Gulf when I was still trying to decide whether to spend the extra $40k on diesels. The swells that day would knock the gas boat off plane over and over. There happened to be a diesel 370 there named SlapShot, owned by a hockey player. He was there, and I asked if he minded if I looked into the engine compartment to compare the accessibility of the gas boat (the dealer told me there was a diesel 370 there I could look at). The hockey guy tol me to hop on, and off we went. The diesel boat MOWED DOWN the same water and seemed like a totally different boat. I made up my mind that day. The comparison was 308hp Cats versus 340hp Mercs. The Diesels acted like they were TWICE as powerful as the gas motors.

Mine came with 308's (the largest they'd put in it) and I have respecced mine to the 350's. That was another huge difference, and I saw no change in fuel mpg at all.

I could ramble on all day, but I beckon any big boat buyer to look hard to see if they can locate a diesel within their budget.

The statement that a gas boat will be easier to sell at LOTO than a diesel? In a 15000 pound or smaller boat, certainly. In a 40' cruiser, one ride in a diesel I would think would convert the most hardcore gas freak.

Obviously I am mistaken cause Burt doesn't agree. And this is no slam against anybody, it just shows that different people value different attributes.

I bought my cruiser to take folks places in comfort at speed. I had owned houseboats for years and speedboats, too. Had a houseboat that would run 30, but it killed me on gas and had no range at all.

If I were looking at a cruiser that would only cruise at 18mph, I'd rather swim. Give me one that will cruise at 30? I'm in. The fact that it has double the range of the gas boat, won't explode, will last for several thousand hours before rebuild, can use fuel that ha no highway tax on it, and can't monoxide your kids as they swim around it with the genset running are gravy on top.

Diesels forever.

The Searay 400 is a nice boat, and I wouldn't necessarily call it underpowered when you compare it to the older 390 EC or the 420/440 Dancers with gas engines. Having run these boats extensively here in the Great lakes I like the 400 better than the others, both in speed and handling. Henry Smith Propellers has a nice prop/rudder package for all these boats and it's definitely worth the money.
There isn't much difference in performance between the 454 and 502 boats so go with the best overall deal.
I have to admit that the older 460 Searay is really a great boat and can be an excellent value, especially when you consider the low finance rates right now.
GET A SURVEY!!!!! on any boat you're seriously considering.

McCollinstn, thanx for all the great info. You are very informative. I asked Marine Max for a quote for a new 36 dancer with 420 Yanmars, but no go (yet). I really like the lines of the new 36 and the wife and I can really step down a little. I've never owned a diesel but an anxious to have one.
My boating experience is mostly at Lake Mead (NV) with generally smooth water all the time except for the occasional wind chop. We have over 1200 miles of shoreline to explore, plus the Grand Canyon (when the water is up). Currently I own a 40 footer with a cruising speed over 60 and tops out over 90 (not with wife aboard). Thats why we found the 40' Sea Ray boring (but beautiful)...

Geeezz..all this good info and the poor guy has to relay it all. FUN HOME: Tell your friend to join and then he can read for heeself.:fish: :fish: :fish:

No argument that 90mph boats are more fun than 35mph boats (which are more fun than 15mph boats).

Since 91 I've owned a 70mph Formula. Can get my kids on it every so often when I beg them. Wife will only go on it every third full moon.

No DSS for her to watch Nascar and golf. No A/C. No giant bathroom or fully stocked fridge and pantry.

Choices? More houseboats (ugh) or a comfortable express cruiser with long legs and good speed. Hey, works for me...

The 360 is a great compromise. I hope you are able to reach a deal you like.

I've been looking at the 480 Motor Yacht and the 540/550 Dancers but like you mentioned earlier, you get into a spot where wake issues will cause you anguish (especially since I plan to run whatever I got at a 30mph cruise).

That sounds like a GREAT idea!!!!!
Thanks for all the info. guy's!!!