Re: Mods to a 3.0 140 hp mercruiser to pull a skier?
My 18' works just fine for pulling folks up and out of the water, I run a 14.5x19 Solas Rubex prop.
The performance upgrade thought I too got early on was soon shattered by the fact that there's nothing out there. Nothing short of a cam, port / polish the heads, over bore the cylinders. At that point, you're looking at spending more than it's worth for the meager gains you would get out of our little 4 bangers.
One of the big errors we make is thinking in terms of a car, the power band in a boat is totally different. From what I see it's much flatter in a boat than a car and a boat motor is meant to be run wide open if you want to go fast. Forget torque figures and realize it's all about how many horses you can crank out. For us, it's pretty much 140 and that's it.