Bob Bull’s 48 MTI with twin 1350s was clocked at 186 mph to earn the Manufacturer Cat Top Gun award. Photo credit: Speed on the Water.Mike Fiore sets a 99 mph single engine production vee bottom speed record in the 565 powered SV29 Outerlimits. Photo credit: Naples Image.
“It’s really impressive if you think about it. The new 565 provides the same performance as the 600 SCi, Mike said. Mike continued, “We were 15 mph faster than the next boat in our class. That is huge – particularly given the 565 is naturally aspirated”
Outerlimits was well represented at LOTO. Photo credit: Speed on the Water.Joel Begin and Mike Fiore flying through the traps in Joel’s 1350 powered SV52 Outerlimits. Photo credit: Naples Image.
Race and lifestyle photos courtesy of Lauri Lampén.
An OptiMax 200XS ROS powers Marcus Johnsson to the 2012 UIM Offshore 3C European Championship.UIM Offshore 3C European and World Champion Marcus Johnsson.
Union International Motonautique (UIM) crowns an Offshore 3C Champion for 2012: it’s Marcus Johnsson – again! Lauri Lampén sent us a message recently regarding his friend Marcus, winner of the UIM Offshore 3C European Championship: “Marcus is the king of the 3C class. He’s won…three UIM world championships and now got his fourth European title. All of them he’s won with Mercury Racing engines.” Hats off for Marcus: winning multiple Offshore 3C European and World Championships is no simple task! Read more
Now here’s something noteworthy: 3.2 MPG on 89 octane pump gas! This is real-world, family boating experience in a new 29 Outerlimits vee bottom with Mercury Racing’s 565.
The business end: Bravo One XR Sport Master with Maximus Short Tube prop.Mike Everson warms up his new OL’s 565 prior to testing.
Mike Everson is the proud, new owner of this beautiful rig. And he lives near us! So, we invited Mike to Fond du Lac for some data collection on his Outerlimits. Mike Griffiths, one of our field techs, gathered some fuel consumption data on Lake Winnebago; however, Mike Everson shared his following weekend experience, too. He covered 124 miles with his family on the Mississippi River. (Hey, it’s his new boat, you would too!) He averaged 3.2 MPG over those 124 miles. Impressive.
Here is Mike Griffiths’ drier, more clinical data:
Two Mikes and a Jason head out for data. Yea, right – data.Carbon fiber, carbon fiber and more carbon fiber… all pushed around by 8.7 liters worth of ponies.
3000 RPM = 46 MPH = 2.76 MPG
3500 RPM = 55 MPH = 3.20 MPG
4000 RPM = 66 MPH = 3.26 MPG
4500 RPM = 75 MPH = 2.97 MPG
5000 RPM = 84 MPH = 2.71 MPG
5250 RPM = 93 MPH = 2.67 MPG
Sweet! Lake conditions limited our ability to extract the 29’s absolute top performance. (Outerlimits’ builder, Mike Fiore, noted 98 MPH top end back at the factory.) However, 93 MPH with three people and a full fuel load is respectable — especially attaining 2.7 MPG with the digital throttle held wide open! [In Darth Vader’s raspy, measured delivery…] “Impressive. Most impressive.”
Stuart Hayim and John Tomlinson on their way to setting a new Around Long Island speed record. Photo credit: National Powerboat Association.Mike Critchley putting the finishing touches on Stuart Hayim’s 1350 before sending to the dyno.
It was 5:12 am when my first email of the morning arrived: “Leaving the dock now. We took MONSTER TORQUE w us.” It was Stuart Hayim signaling the start of his around Long Island record run. Stuart’s brand new 42 MTI was powered with Mercury Racing 1350’s,M8 drives and 5-blade CNC Cleaver props. And he was pumped up! (He borrowed “Monster Torque” from our blog post headline of October 2010.) A couple hours later, at 8:37 am, I received another: “Record now back in hands. Of MHP, [Mercury Hi-Performance (now Racing)] thanks to the whole team. 2 hours 11 min. Sent from my iPhone”
It took a minute for the message to sink in — 2:11. 2:11! That’s almost an hour off last year’s time — and Stuart’s previous record! The time is also about half of the record Bill Sirois and I had set back in 1968. John Tomlinson and Stuart Hayim didn’t just break the record. They smashed it! As Stuart says, “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!” I guess so.
“Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!”Stuart is all smiles as he and John prepare to embark on their historic run. Photo courtesy of Stuart Hayim.
I called Stuart to congratulate him. In classic Stuart speak, he said, “I can’t believe we left 11 minutes on the table. We could have run faster….When it got rough, Johnny kept asking if I was all right. I said, ‘At 65 years of age, I’m an old man, not a baby!’ …We could have shaved 11 minutes easily.” Read more
I first reviewed my classic literature collection for information regarding the evolution of surface piercing propellers. Copy from the propeller section of a 1972 Hi-Performance Mercury/MerCruiser Accessories catalog references our change from bronze to stainless steel that year. I sent Dick Snyder an e-mail to get his input regarding racing propeller history.
Dick Snyder
Three-blade “elephant ear” props on a quad 1250BP rig ready for testing at Lake X.A 2-blade stainless prop on a merCruiser III drive. This drive was packaged with a 475 h.p. engine.
Dick Snyder was in charge of Mercury’s propeller engineering in the early ’60s. “When I took over prop engineering in the early ’60s, I had inherited nothing but low rake (6 degree), 2-bladed props. We had no racing or hi-performance props. “There soon came a time when I fell in love with 15 degrees of rake and 3-bladed props for the added smoothness and a little better acceleration. You typically would lose a small amount of top-end going from a 2-blade to 3-blade prop. The higher 15-degree rake allowed the props to “hold” at greater trim angles for enhanced bow lift and greater hull efficiency. This resulted with even greater top-end speeds than the lower rake 2-blade props,” Dick explained. In 1984, Dick was promoted to Director of Mercury Hi-Performance. So he promoted Bob Hetzel to run Mercury’s racing prop and gearcase shop. “We had quite an interesting development of stainless steel props for racing, followed by replacing bronze for stainless steel on our recreational props,” said Dick. Read more
