I'm jealous. My 2013 Z71 doesn't do any better even with its puny 5.3 because that hamster is spinning its heart out.

that is decent mileage considering the weight and the hills in missouri.i pulled a 43 ft enclosed trailor with the drag boat&support equipment to arazona with a totally stock 97 1 ton chevy dually[454] and averaged 5.9 mpg round trip.reg gas was around 2.25 per gallon that year.

Flat fronted steel trailer ? Been there !

aluminum,even the floor and yes flat nose with a box covering the generator that was mounted up high in the front.

When looking for a purpose tow vehicle for our 38' Powerquest, I was torn between a late 90's 454 Chevy ot late 90's 7.3 Powerstroke. Very happy with the 7.3 as we get 10-12 mpg towing to and from LOTO and Omaha.

Yep, I made the mistake of buying a brand new F350 Lariat with a 5.4 Gas engine. Felt fine around town. Hooked the boat to it, towed to loto, omg, what a dog. Dam thing spent most of the trip revving its azz off and got horrid mpg. Quickly traded that in for the 6.0L diesel. Power was way better, and mpg was better, then the engine problems began shortly after.

So my first question is....what is the prop slip on both props ?? Without knowing what the slip numbers may be, you can do all of the calculations you want. My switch from 4 blades to 5 blades made a huge acceleration change, but cost me 2 mph up top. Obviously slip went down.

With what you have provided us, my pick would be the higher torque motor, but it will have less top end.

More pitch, better fuel economy. Boat runs 50 At 3000. 60 at 3500.00 with the cruising locking props. With the go fast props the speed at the same RPMs considerably less and burns more fuel to get to the same speed as the locking props.

More Rpm more fuel.

Also a heavy load consumes more fuel. Boats are on heavy load only planing and WOT imo


My truck 3/4 to 6.0 gets 13-15 until I put the boat on then its. 4 and sometimes 8 .

AS far as the RPM argument on a diesel . My 22,000 pound motor home gets about 7 in the mountains and hills on the way to havasu. When you add about 10,000 pounds of boat behind it it gets just about 7.. RPMs equal fuel consumption

High Torque , Low Rpm Combo any Day for a Boat. Now on the other hand if you had the ability to shift , Low Torque, High Rpm would accelerate you faster if you can keep the revs up.

If I ever get around to putting my engines in I should be able to test this pretty well and see what difference it makes. My old torque peak was at 4600 so when accelerating from a 4600 rpm cruise to wide open torque was decreasing. My new torque peak is 5200 so torque will still be increasing as I accelerate from 4600 to as far as 5200. When torque does start falling off the increase in hp on these engines is kicking in. That's how it works in my head anyway. I'm hoping to get them installed in the next week or so.