Before I go any further let me give a huge thank you to Tim Powell and Fastbass Marine. Tim went above and beyond to help make this happen and I'm extremely grateful to him. That Joey guy is swell as well. I think he does all the work, Tim just sleeps in the boats.....Thank you to Glen Reynolds as well.
I picked up the 300R the Friday before Memorial weekend and I now have just over 10 hours on the motor. I'm extremely happy with the motor so far. It's an absolute beast.
Here are the positive highlights:
-I came from 2.5's, offshore mids, and the 300X to the opti. This motor puts a smile on my face again.
-It sounds absolutely bad azzzzz!!!! Especially when you trim it up in the early morning before a tournament launch. My son thinks it sounds so good he always wants to start it.
-The auto start feature is so cool. Turn the key and it does the rest until it turns over.
-It is loud when you want it to be loud and then it quiets down. People always ask me when I pull up and its trimmed down if its running.
-The idle is super smooth.
-I personally love the looks. So I'm a huge fan of it on the water and mounted to an Allison.
-The entire motor wipes down so much easier as well at the end of a long day because it is essentially two huge covers (top and bottom).
-I think the larger gear case cruises better at 40-60 as well. It feels planted and much more stable. I have found I now go on lake cruises with friends and it just holds and maneuvers well.
-I'm new to 1.75 gears. I have only run them one time when we swapped Jay's gear case to my boat to gather performance data prior to the switch. I'm struggling to stay off the limiter, but since this motor lets you run on the limiter and pulls power back I like that better than the hitting the opti limiter and getting shut down.
-No oil and 87 octane. Man it is so nice to put the same gas in the truck and boat finally.
The dislikes (short list)
-Rigging this thing is an absolute pain in the butt. My motor took over 6 hours to hang. I have swapped a handful of motors and this one was the worse. The cable entry sucks. They leave you no room and the little opening you work inside of isn't prepped well so you sand skin away working in the hole. When it is all done it looks awesome, but getting it to that point is painful. I will say they do a couple of smart things to assist, but expect to spend some time on it. If you are doing a re-power, your throttle cables may be too short as well. I had to "Git-R-Done" with some unorthodox routing and someone else I know did as well.
-It is huge. Not only is it big, but it is heavy. I will cover weight below. Because it is big my power pole setup is very close to the motor. I have already hit the cowl one time when folding them down for running and some bodywork was needed and a little decal magic.
-The cowl is a bugger to get on. The setup is really cool, its just hard to get back on. Maybe its just mine, but I cross my fingers every time I take it off that it will latch again.
-Break in. I drove 2 hours on a 1,500 acre chain of 3 lakes. Each lake is about 500 acres. That was 2 hours of circles on Memorial weekend. The motor couldn't wait to be opened up and neither could I. LOL
-I had to sell 2 of my favorite props. 26 Hoss and 28 P3. I didn't even run them. It was very clear it would blow the doors off of them.
Performance:
My boat is setup different than all that I know of. I run 13.5" of setback and the plate is manual not hydraulic. I also have wedges. This distance and manual plate worked fine for the 300XS DBR. I did notice the holeshot got worse when I went back that far and added the power poles, but the DBR made up for it and my setup was running very good. Unfortunately the weight of the 300R is a problem for this amount of setback. The motor is a solid 50lbs heavier and I don't think losing the oil tank helped as I lost forward weight to counter the motor with all the setback. As a result I have to vent all my props to see similar holeshot performance. I realize others with the R are not doing that, but with this much setback it was a must. I'm running 8 open holes on my 28, 30, and 32 Promax. Because of the weight and setback the nose goes sky high when launching. All the props I have do this. I tried adding 160lbs up in the nose and that didn't really help. The setup is going to have to change to get around this. In addition, when tournament fishing I'm forced to run a 28 to get me, a full livewell, and a 300lb partner out of the hole. Luckily we only fish 1000 acre lakes so I go less than a half tank of gas.
If I ignore holeshot the performance is equal to that of the 300XS DBR so far. They are neck and neck with the 30. So I honestly cannot get supper fired up about the acceleration or performance, the opti with DBR was pretty dang good. Especially with the 1.75 case. My DBR (1.62)with a 28 promax was lethal and could put the hurting on the R so far. It would run 97 @ 6400 rpm and do it wicked quick. The 300R needs a 32 promax to get over 95, and the 32 is not near as quick to do it. But that is with the same setup that it took the Opti to be quick and fast, now it is time to change things to make the R quick and fast (below). What does excite me about the performance so far is that the motor is stock and I have a warranty and it is virtually running with a modified motor that took a years worth of setup to get it dialed in to be quick and fast. In addition, if I look at it vs. a stock 300XS, the R has much better performance. From a Mercury marketing perspective I believe the spin.
Here is a test with the 30 Promax. The boat weight and setup was identical for all tests. The only change was the motor.
Stock 300XS 1.62 in Red
DBR 300XS 1.62 in Blue
DBR 300XS 1.75 in Green
Stock 300R 1.75 in Orange
The vertical line marks the spot the data at the bottom of the table is reading below the graph. The graph can be deceiving as it is speed vs time. distance vs time is the bottom graph. That is the true "race" if you will. You can see the 300R and 300XS DBR 1.75 are right on each other for distance.
The 300R and 300XS DBR 1.75 were very close in speed vs time. While the R got out a little slower it pulled through the mid range and hit the limiter at 95 24' behind the 300XS DBR 1.75. The DBR 300 died at 62/6300 which is why you see the acceleration slow way down after 93/94. You can see the R pulled right up to the 6400 rev limiter.
You can also see how much the DBR helped on the 30 when you look at the Red vs Blue. The DBR was 9mph faster at 26 seconds and over 600' out in front. Even a 100' lead takes a long time to catch, I wish I had kept the 300R on the limiter to show how long it takes to close. I may re-do that run in the morning. The point is clear. The R really pulls the props on top. You can see the XS rate of change slows way down.
Now that I have logged all the props (28,30,32 Promax, 32 P4, 34 P3) with the same setup as the 300XS, I will begin to optimize my setup for the R. Testing on Tim's boat with a 300R produced a much better holeshot (just under 2 seconds faster in 5-85) and we could launch the same 30 Promax used on my boat with all the plugs in. I have a new hydraulic jackplate coming as well as a static setback plate so I can keep my powered holeshot plate(without the foil it now works). I'm going back to 10". I did a bunch of acceleration testing early on and my boat was the quickest at that distance and Tim's boat is at 9.5", so that validates well.
It also appears that the older long skid planner without the concave center is keeping the engine from being raised. I will be cutting the concave in the skid planner to allow higher motor heights. Right now I run out of water pressure at 1.5" over. That is still 0.7" higher than I was running before.
I'm sure a new prop will make its way into testing as well. Maybe a 5 blade. So far the Promax has tested well against the Max 5.
More to follow.
And yes, I took it over 100.
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