Re: Gas mileage / hours - Best Engine?
It's really quite simple (and we've discussed this before) -- Miles per gallon is not absolute and is not known until you have completed a trip. You also have no idea where the sweet spot is. You may get 3.5 mpg on one trip. On the next trip you may be heavily loaded and expect to get 3.5, end up in weather, and your real mpg turns out to be 2.5. Will you get to your destination on available fuel -- maybe and maybe not. You won't know until you either get there or run out. Flow rate is needed to translate speed to MPG and your gas gauge is only a "fuel level" and not a very reliable way to figure MPG on the fly. GPS can provide the odometer function but if you don't have it, flow rate is far more accurate than your fuel gauge because it is absolute, and as we have discussed previously, you will know what flow rate is at whatever cruise speed you choose within a few hundred yards from the dock. It also tells you immediately whether there is an impending problem. While an engine may be running well, it may be consuming fuel at a rate equivalent to a big money loser at a Las Vegas crap table. Without flow rate you have no idea what's going on until you run out of fuel. Granted, many folks are always in sight of land when they boat so all of this is rather unimportant. For those of us that run big water and where fuel is scarce, I want to know what's going on right now -- not after the trip is over. The airline industry uses gallons/hour and pounds/hour for the very same reasons and they even have GPS. Most people would operate their boats very differently if they had a flow meter and that will be more of an issue during this boating season as we are seening the highest fuel prices in history. I'm not selling flow meters -- just touting their value.
