I'm looking at these boats, and most have 496HO's, which I'm told are very reliable. These are around 375hr boats. I came across a nice one with 525's, with closed cooling, fresh water boat. Same number of hours. Im told these 525's require a lot more servicing. I would rather have dependability over a few more top end mph's. Can anyone tell me more about these motors? I had a 330SS with standard 496's and I had no problems. Thanks

IMO if you/ve getting a sport cruiser like that I wouldn't drop much to more money on the boat with 525's.
If they're the same price I'd get the 525's for the extra hp and bragging rights of a blue motor, plus a few more mph
I'd say that the 496HO's would certainly give more hours of service free operation, just at the cost of the extra performance.
Good luck with your purchase, those are awesome boats.

See ya,
Kelly

bragging rights for cracked headers and blown bravo 3's come with the 525's too! :

I knew about issues some, but not all owners, have had w/525's but I never new they came with B3's
I thought XR's were the standard outdrive for the medium performance blue motors.
Does the second prop make them faster and are they as strong as XR's?

See ya,
Kelly

The HO boat should have Bravo III X's and the 525 boat Bravo III XR's. What year are the boats? Regardless of power, they are heavy boats and will be hard on the drives.

The 525 boat will have xr's of some sort. As far as the question, the 496 boat will be much less maintenance, easier on drives, and not have any header problems. Not sure it would be worth it to have blue motors in a 37ss and they're probably only worth an extra 5mph. I have a buddy looking for the same boat and wants ho's with bravo 3

I am not sure about the 370ss, but the 400ss comes with bIII xr's even with the 8.2 motors. At least that's what my 2012 model has. I wouldn't worry about the drives with either motor package as long as you drive it with a reasonable amount of care. Some restraint with the throttles will help your drives lead a long happy life.
Again not sure of the model you are looking at, but does the 496 boat have the axius system? If so, that's a no brainer for docking and maneuvering! In fact, I passed over a 400ss with 565 Merc's because it did not have the system. That and it was a demo boat that was on it's third drive already!
Good luck in your search, they are great all around boats!

Thanks for the comments. No axius on the boats . Too old , in the 2005-2006 range. Would be nice. Newer one by me with Axius is selling for $189K which is more than I can do. Also I was told to be very careful of 2008 Axius boats as this was first year and there were problems.

I bought a 06 400SS with the 525's and have been really happy with it, we run in some rough water and it sits in the ocean year round, after all these years it still runs great and looks like new
It has 400 hours on it and just last week i had the top end done on both motors just to be safe, turns out they both were in great shape, i'm replacing the headers also ( now that hurts ) but over all very little issues,
but i also keep up on service

I did have both drives gone thru at 300 hours after one broke ( which might have had something to do with running 90 miles of open ocean from Catalina to Ventura in rough water at a higher speed than i should)
having it in the the air was not the best thing for it but we did have fun

my major issue with my 370 was loose steering. This was early on about 200hrs. the gimble ring ovaled out and caused major slop in steering. warranty did not cover this and was expensive. engines and drives had to be removed to replace cheap part.
i battled with formula that such heavy fast boat should have hydraulic steering. mercury racing states boats over 70mph have to have hydraulic steering, my 370 goes 60+ so no factory hydraulic steering. with boat out of the water getting gimble replaced i added Latham steering. Formula did help me out by buying parts direct through them at cost and threw in couple $$$$

Other than lots of systems to maintain, the boat is awesome. Typical "break out another thousand" applies