- Joined
- Dec 23, 2018
- Messages
- 209
- Reaction score
- 93
- Points
- 28
- Age
- 54
- Location
- Long Island, NY
- Model
- Express 330
I don't see many Grady's with Mercury power so I thought to post this in case anyone was interested in going this route. I've got a thread going over on THT but I know not everyone here goes over there. Also, there are still a LOT of these running around on 225/250 original power and I had a hell of a time researching 330 repowers and I couldn't find much info.
04 330 express that I bought in December of 2020. Used it with the OE yamaha 225's for a season and while it performed really well for what it is.... which is a big heavy underpowered boat.... I decided I like the boat enough to invest in a repower. While not everyone cares what the factory HP limitations are, I'm paranoid so it had to be a set of 300's. While I don't think any of the big 3 makes a bad 300 hp engine, I'm old school so the V8 Merc was the only choice for me.
I ordered fusion white Verado 300's in November of '21 with an expected 54 week wait time. That ensured another season with the Yamahas which was fine and even with 1000 hours, they ran really well. Here we are 72 weeks later and they just arrived. My old engines are sold, paid for, and off the boat so rigging the new will start next week. I'm adding in a few extras like a new 12" simrad in lieu of a vesselview and also upgrading my OE bennett trim tabs so they autoretract and have position indicators.
For comparison, these are the Yamaha numbers from the survey in 2020.
1500 8.4
2000 10
2500 11
3000 12.5
3500 14
4000 18.2
4500 25.2
5000 30
5500 33.5
WOT 35
I don't like plodding along so I was ringing out the 225's pretty good at 4900 to cruise at 28/29 mph. Based on what Oceandansar told me, I'm hoping to cruise at my current top speed and top out at 42/43
a little engine porn:
04 330 express that I bought in December of 2020. Used it with the OE yamaha 225's for a season and while it performed really well for what it is.... which is a big heavy underpowered boat.... I decided I like the boat enough to invest in a repower. While not everyone cares what the factory HP limitations are, I'm paranoid so it had to be a set of 300's. While I don't think any of the big 3 makes a bad 300 hp engine, I'm old school so the V8 Merc was the only choice for me.
I ordered fusion white Verado 300's in November of '21 with an expected 54 week wait time. That ensured another season with the Yamahas which was fine and even with 1000 hours, they ran really well. Here we are 72 weeks later and they just arrived. My old engines are sold, paid for, and off the boat so rigging the new will start next week. I'm adding in a few extras like a new 12" simrad in lieu of a vesselview and also upgrading my OE bennett trim tabs so they autoretract and have position indicators.
For comparison, these are the Yamaha numbers from the survey in 2020.
1500 8.4
2000 10
2500 11
3000 12.5
3500 14
4000 18.2
4500 25.2
5000 30
5500 33.5
WOT 35
I don't like plodding along so I was ringing out the 225's pretty good at 4900 to cruise at 28/29 mph. Based on what Oceandansar told me, I'm hoping to cruise at my current top speed and top out at 42/43
a little engine porn: