I appreciate your concern but its what I want. Faster, more efficient, ease of maintenance, 5 years of warranty. When I say the internals are good I mean the rotating assembly. But they are still 32 years old and rusty as hell from the previous owner. Due to the rust I am constantly having mechanical issues with every component but the internals. The only way to get ahead of it all is to get it all out and start new. And then I still have the old technology so I will still have about 1 NMPG or less.
They do these conversions in Florida a lot from what I see. I just can't find a Tolly that's been done. But boats of similar weight and hull type and size seem to pick up quite a bit of speed at slightly less fuel burn then inboards.
Boat people have this perverse thought of always worrying about resale. But yet often the same people who talk about it will spend huge money on old cars, booze, other little toys and trinkets that have little or no resale at all. Seriously guys in town I talk about this have blown well over $100,000 in the last few years on junk they'll never be able to sell but when it comes to their boat they stress over the price of new fenders.
I'm just looking to see if anyone has done an outboard conversion not to argue the point of doing it.
Robo,
I'd say good on ya, and have at it. This is not an investment, it's an expense and that's what toys are. If it were short term (like a one time loop trip), there could be an arguement to have a boat that is popular and sells fast, but few make money buying and selling.
If you come close to your projected costs, I'd say it's a BARGAIN, and you'll have MUCH more reliability and performance.
There's not a huge demand for old gas powered boats, so if you like the hull and convert, it's more than likely MUCH less costly than selling and buying something newer.
As for keeping the old engines and upgrading them... TOTALLY agree with you. It won't be a few thousand, it will be well north of your conversion costs and you'd still have old gas engines. I've been there!
As for balance, you can easily figure out how much the center of gravity will move, just like they do in aircraft conversions.
I've had a few friends do conversions.. IO to OB, and gas to diesel. None of them will make money on the deals, but every one of them ended up with better performance and reliability on a known hull that they liked.
So.... go for it!