www.iFourWinns.com

[/quote] The saying is "there is no replacement for displacement" as I listen to all the little tuners try to compare to American Muscle hahahaha[/quote]

Um, I didn't see any of the foreign car manufacturers sucking off the government teet to survive though......

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2003 Four Winns Horizon 220 5.0 GXi/SX

Be aware our so called enlightened ( = desperate or greedy) Governments outside the US charge us a yearly "road tax" on cars, increasing as the car becomes more uneconomic (mpg wise) in a contrived test.

I can do 8,000 miles an year in my politically incorrect 3.0 litre car, paying the maximum rate of tax, yet someone can do 80,000 miles an year in a 2 litre car, probably emitting more than 8 x the CO2 than I do and pay less road tax.

Going back to boat engines, there is a certain amount of excess weight on the GM V8 cast iron motors. I suspect cast iron is still the material of choice for boat engines because it's cheap and many boats as standard are raw water cooled; disposable motors. I could also imagine an enormously overengineered very cheap enormous cast iron V8 weighing 10,000lb wouldn't be much fun in a 20' boat. If it was a modern aluminium V8 weighing 800 lbs, it would be quite different.

Graham

I've got a 5.4L engine so I can only imagine the the tax and cost of running that up and down the road in the UK.

As far as boat engines, it's my understanding that GM is considering getting out of the marine block business. Seems like ripe opportunity for another manufacturer to make a mass produced aluminum block that can be sized to cover a range of displacements.

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2003 Four Winns Horizon 220 5.0 GXi/SX

Hi Graham, was thinking with the closed cooling systems now available from both vendors on GM engines, there is no reason at all you could not run one of the new Gen 3 or Gen 4 all alloy GM motors - if I recall the weight saving is something like 100kg or more, and you could run a regular production car engine (with maybe just a camshaft change) and a regular production car catalytic convertor which would save quite a bit of money I would think. The only trick is the manifods - if we could just get away from water cooling these and come up with a better system.....

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Alec

2006 Horizon 190
VP 4.3GL/SX, Sunsport

The V8 catalyst equipped engines from VP use water cooled aluminium exhaust manifolds and risers already; presumably they could be used without the catalytic converter inside.

No idea about the price though!

GHraham

I seem to remember a few gripes about engine size and fuel economy back when gas prices were over $4 per gallon.

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2007 Horizon 200
4.3L GXi/ SX 225 HP

Thanks all for your input. Looks like going with the best deal on a larger engine such as 5.7 or 350 is the way to go. Doesn't look like I can go wrong either way. The other issue now is that many of the boats out there are no where near inline with NADA pricing. Two of the banks I use, use NADA mid point pricing for the loan. Granted NADA may not be accurate but getting a loan for a boat that is not close won't happen. I don't mind a couple $K off but some are 5 to 10 thousand off. Craziness..lol

Don't overpay and assume the sellers bad position. The pricing guides just got updated and sellers are going to have to face reality. There was a huge adjustment in book values across the board. Also, for those who want to hold out for spring, in April the books will reset the prices again so it would be break even at best.

It's comical looking at some of the people trying to sell boats and what they are asking. It's almost like they want to ignore the book values. A lot of recent new boat owners are way under water.

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2003 Four Winns Horizon 220 5.0 GXi/SX

The 220SS I have has the Volvo 5.7 rated at 300hp it works very well for water sports. I'd go for a 5.7 over a 5.0 just for the advantage in torque. Pulling skier/wake-boarders and tubers out of the hole is easy and that means the world when your teaching/learning to wake-board or ski. I would take the time to get EXACTLY what you want that way you'll be keeping it a long time and not be in the same position as so many others trying to sell a boat in a depressed market.

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Mike
Smithville, MO
08' Hayabusa, 2011 Subaru Outback, 03' Infiniti G-35 S.C.