City boat show yesterday. My 2018 crush and why

Originally Posted by Kjkimball

Mike,

Thank you for your detailed response. I too have always been a GM guy. Trucks, Corvettes, etc. The boats I have owned have had GM Indmar engines in them. My personal experience, however, is quite different from yours on several points when comparing PCM and Raptor. I have had the occasion to experience the 2 brands of engines in the exact same boat. A friend runs a wakeboard school in Orlando and puts time on engines in his boat for test reasons. A couple years ago, he had a 2013 G23 with PCM 450 in it and ran it for about 250 hours. He got a good feel for the power, load planing ability, sound levels and fuel consumption. Indmar then put a Raptor 440 in it that he ran another 300-400 hours. All the same driver on the same lake with both engines. Both with 1.5 trans ratio and 15" props. The Raptor saved him hundreds of dollars per month on fuel. It would plane a larger load than the PCM 450. The Raptor was not as loud in the cabin as the PCM 450.

The ZR4 is a 6L GM. It doesn't make the power of the raptor 440 when you look at the official power and torque numbers submitted by PCM and Indmar to the EPA and CARB. The info on the CARB website is a great place to get apples to apples comparisons on the power being produced by each engine brand. Why? ALL the engines are run on the EXACT same test fuel and these are the certified numbers as submitted by each engine company to the EPA and CARB even if they advertise otherwise. If the engine companies were to lie to EPA or CARB, they would find themselves in the same position as VW did recently.

PCM 409: 363hp@5500rpm and 341 ft-lb torque
PCM 450: 374hp@5600rpm and 351 ft-lb torque
Indmar Raptor 400: 350hp @5400rpm and 404 ft-lb
Indmar Raptor 440: 398hp @5500 rpm and 427ft-lb

The PCM 450 only makes 11 more HP and 10 ft-lb more torque than the PCM 409 and both are less than the Raptor 440. PCM went to 1.76:1 and then 2:1 gear to make the engines "feel" stronger when the Raptor first came out. Now the Raptor engines are getting these ratios too. On the CARB site, the PCM DI engines are 342hp and 390hp not 355hp and 450hp as advertised. Seems perception is marketed more than reality on some points.

I agree that the Indmar engines look more "utilitarian" than PCM or Ilmor. Indmar produces around 5000 engines per year for the tow sports market. That is roughly half of all the engines put in tow boats each year. PCM, Ilmor, Merc, Marine Power make up the other half of the roughly 10,000 new tow boats a year. That works out to about 20,000 Raptor engines in boats since 2015 model year compared to roughly 3000 PCM 6L engines during that time if we assume PCM spreads its 2500/yr between 5.7, 6L and LSA blocks. Volume helps reduce cost and since all the Raptors are a common block, dealers can have more parts for the one block instead of a couple for each of 3 blocks from a line of GM engines. Indmar recognized this too as the built GM engines for 25 years with a greater range of GM blocks than PCM.

Raptor doesn't have a backup switch. The post above was referring to how Supra helm has touch screen and switches for redundancy of the helm controls and systems. Not the engine.

The Ford/GM loyalty factor will always be there. A good friend of mine owns a 2010 Moomba. Has never owned and would never own a Ford car or truck. He is loyal to the General 100%. He has been a test boat operator for Indmar since the start of the Ford program. He has personally put thousands of hours on all the raptor engines from 360-575. He would never buy a boat with a FORD in it. But, he'll tell ya' right now, his next boat WILL have an Indmar Raptor in it, no questions asked. His time in the boats testing the engines has made him an Indmar fan in spite of his hard core GM car and truck loyalty.

Love it when someone throws down cold hard facts. This response is gold.