Billy your right but with 509 cubic inch the reliability factor on those engines is much harded to last every race 80 + miles they will be fast but can they keep those engines alive !Last year i had the same set up as you have now,and had to run againest cat killer. So that boat went to France and this year we have a boat that fits the class .i tryed to have it changed for this year but know one would agree so this is what we had to do to race in this class .

Billy,

Like Rick said it isnt that easy to make much more HP then 950-1000 and finish races with a 509 cu. in. motor.The differance is now with the cu. in. they have they can make 1500-1700 easily and not push the engines with boost.

If you dont limit the cu. in. you could have boats in the class running 1500- 1600- 1700 hp and that wouldnt work and kill a class quick.

i agree that it is easier on the larger inch engines to make big power but i think its pretty easy to make 1000 reliable horsepower with 509 inches and a forced induction system. i dont agree that its "easy" to make 1500-1700 horsepower without pushing these engines that we are speaking of- and surely they dont make anywhere near that kind of power on pump gas- i think that limit is around 1200? my point is that it would be easy to police fuel and boost which might make it easier to assemble one large class instead of two. i think we all know that there arent too many folks out there that have the spare bucks laying around to just go changing their cubic inches so they just race wherever they can. we made the mistake of not looking into the rules in question when we changed to 850s this year. it slipped my mind that the merc 850 was 557 inches and that left us in a position of racing cat killer unleashed or p1. we obviously chose p1 but if cat killer was limited on fuel and/or boost i think it would be a different story. if you still disagree i will humbly go back to hiding in the junkyard.

LOL... Billy dont be silly its always good to have good conversation about things like this and hear different options.
Your point is well taken maybe u should see if there is a way to limit the cat killer so u can run against him. Like u said fuel and boost might be a good starting point. I think they would welcome some competition.

nothin but love frank i really do think that limiting fuel and or boost would even it out but im not the right guy to decide. im sure that mike at sterling probably knows off the top of his head exactly the max hp potential of those engines on 93 octane. i dont know for sure but im pretty sure that the killer is not the lightest boat out there either. i dont think that any of us should worry a whole lot about trying to convince them to try to race in in unlimited if they want some competition maybe they should check themselves but i dont think any of it would matter because at the beginning of the season i was told that no amount of extra weight or even tying our arms around our backs would allow us to compete in unlimited. im still kind of wondering about this because i dont understand why we were told no way when i believe you guys now have 1000 a side no?

frank sorry i just realized that you said we should try to run against the cat killer. my point of joining this discussion was to discuss possibly all the boats running together again in one class for more competition. i realize that this probably wont happen but i just think that the cubic inch rule isnt as crucial as fuel octane or boost or adding weight to the boats that are over the cubic inch rule. i know where everyone stands on this i guess i just felt like throwing my thoughts out there.
cheers!

You can change all the engine rules you want, it will never beat a bigger boat. The cat killer can run 140 on cruise control and we don't have enough bottom too run at those speed. Remember it was a 47' boat cut down, the running surface is a lot larger than all of our boats

Guys, I have no dog in the fight, yet, but as productive as this might be on the boards, why dont you guys have a conference call(and include everyone ie Benny and Billy) or meet in the pits in NYC and get on the same page in less than 20 minutes. This thread was started as Frank thanking his sponsors and it has gotten so far off topic its kinda funny. The boards are not the place to be working this out.

Trent

Thanks Trent...

sorry to mess up the show