When I'm in a hurry (and the lake's flat), I run them wide open, 4600 RPM. My motor's were rebuilt in 2006, and if they're maintained, they should have no problem at that speed.

That said, you gain very little benefit above 3200-3600 rpm, and your mileage drops considerably. But it is fun :)

John

Mine with a rebuilt and one a 73 with a milion hrs likes 3200 gps speed of 28 IDo wot for a min or two when I can to clean um out or blow up mr starboard so I can justify the job of changing him out

That would depend on how far you wanted to go in 30 min.


dave

I love the way you think Norm . My buddy has a 0 turn lawn mowed that says the fastest in the world on it I told him that was silly I put a way a six on my 1/4 acker by design low gear with my JD just pulling along

I love to go fast, I am considering replacing my throttle levers with toggle switches, I have run my gas boats wide open for miles if I was in the mood to burn up some fuel We ran over tem miles last year in a bit of a sudo race with another frien from the marina, he was in a
30' ish. plastic boat with twin small fords, both of our bottoms were dirty late in the season and we ran dead up at 30 mph gps. I beat him to the inside curve in the river and only pulled ahead then, what fun. Can't wait till warm weather.


The real answer is if everything below the hatches is in properly maintained good condition WOT should not hurt a thing, sure the wear factor goes up by some intangible factor but that is expected and hard to nail down. I have NEVER saw a v8 boat engine hurt from running at WOT when the RPM's are in the proper range and it is kept cool. With that said I run the poopoo out of my 440's in the 39 and if needed can fix them if something happened and this is why I am comfortable doing so.
On the other hand My Bertram has twin Detroit 871 TI's and I rarely run it at full throttle cause I would not be a happy boater if I popped one of those, ouch $$$. Out of 70 boats in our marina I bet there are 10 that have never been run at more than 2500 rpm. ??? Beats the sheite out of me.....

360's/275hp. Rebuilt and bored .030 over, after I got them in 2006. 4200-4600 is where you should normally top out, so I'm happy with it.

My last boat, a 36' fuel-injected Wellcraft, topped out at about 32kts, 4400rpm. It sucked down 26 gallons/hr.... PER ENGINE.

Yep, just what I was hoping for.... Thanks for the comments. Just what I was hoping for, a little more gittieup, without doing something stuid. Felt like I was holding her back and I just wanted some confirmation. The old girl might not be a spring chicken, but she's not in a walker. Thanks guys, my daughter called her the Cribbean Slow and it just didn't feel right.