TomCat Evinrude E-Tec

T

Tom Little

New member
Spent the day with my dealer trying different propellors on the Evinrude 150 E-Tec on my yet to be delivered TC255. The boat was light with only three people, 60 gallons of fuel, and full add ons such as air conditioning, inverter and golf cart batteries. Waters were with a light chop and only a light sea breeze.

Best performance was with 15X15 props. Boat planed at 14 mph in 5.5 seconds. Top speed was 48 mph at 6100rpm. When running only one engine, boat planed in 12 seconds and hit a top speed of 30mph at 4800rpm.

Comfortable cruising speed was at 25mph at 3400rpm.

The loudest noise was the hull passing through the water. Normal conversation was pleasant in the cabin with the rear door open. Even in Florida, it was too cold to keep the center window open at high speeds. At the dock, it was impossible to hear the engines at idle in the cabin and we used the tach to be sure that they were running.

Looks like will get delivery on Wednesday, then the work begins.
 
Tom, when running on one engine, was the other engine out of the water? If so, be very careful steering, with one tilted up, it puts a lot of strain on the system to go hard over. I got mine out of kilter that way.

Charlie
 
Warren, I'll post too as I install mine. Plans now are to put the inlet valve up under the forward bunk in the outboard side of the port sponson and run the water inlet hose up and into the cabinet under the aft dinette seat where the unit will be near the door for the air inlet. Not sure about routing the cool exhaust line yet, I'm still in Maine, will start the install when I get home next week.

Charlie
 
I do not plan to run the TomCat on a single engine as a regular operation. The not running engine was tilted up. In the event of engine failure or propeller damage, it is good to know that I can get home on one engine even though that engine will work very hard.

The air conditioning unit installed is a RV unit mounted on the cabin roof similar to that installed by Thataway. It runs off dock power or the new Honda 2000i.
 
Well today I decided to finally test running my Tomcat with one engine.

I shut off my port engine and trimmed it completely out of the water. Using just my starboard engine I ran it up. The engine definitely lugs, but she was able to plane off. My engine got up to 4000 rpm but I backed it down after that. I'm assuming it would go higher with enough time but I just wanted to see if I could plane off on one engine. I was not exactly light today either...3/4 tanks of fuel, 150 pounds of dive gear, etc. It took a while to get planed off, and of course it was slow to accelerate over plane but it was steady and got the job done. As you can imagine with one engine up the steering is stiff but manageable. I'm impressed and pleased to know I can plane with one engine if necessary. I did not notice any unusual handling characteristics other than the slow plane time of course and the stiffer steering.
 
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