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Question - if it takes 5 years to recoup on running costs, and by the sound of it you would upgrade again in 5 years, you are at zero cost, with an engine that is very sellable !! Say you only get £1500 for it, ( thats almost next years Fuel bill paid ) Plus you have had the quiter smoother engine that will "tootle" about as much as you like.A few months ago I was on the point of trading in my 60hp Mariner Bigfoot 2 stroke for a 70hp Suzuki 4 stroke - at a net cost of about £4k fitted. To be fair this was a good price from Warrior and I was very tempted but I've been doing the sums.
Since I bought the boat about a year ago I've done 100 hours and I think I'm getting about 4 miles to the gallon at my chosen cruise of 20 knots. If I take the most optimistic figures I have seen for the suzuki that seems to be about 7 mpg.
So cost per year at the moment is about 500 gallons (probably much less as many of the hours will have been spent tootling around). I guess that's a total cost of about £2k (jeeez!!). But the suzuki would still have cost me about £1200, so it would have taken 5 years to recoup the cost of the upgrade.
Another salient point is that the local Mariner dealer charges only £70 for the annual service whereas the Suzuki dealer wants a lot more.
And the Mariner has phenomenal acceleration and is almost a whole person lighter than the Suzuki.
And I don't find the Mariner noisy. But I do find its tootling perfomance very poor (a bitch sometimes to restart).
Mike
From a straight business point of view it's a no brainer.
5 years to cover cost
Quiter running
New warrenty
lower tick over etc.
higher resale.
So the answer is in the heart not the wallet, otherwise you would just do it.