Engine tests (RIVAs ballistics)

[Jono]

Well... I was pondering this thread on my lovely commute home..... train operators... don't you love their reliability, cleanliness and cheerful approach to their customer base.... anyway... I'll put my money where my mouth is....steady.... I KNOW I have a big mouth...... and offer the following to RIVA.... in a short while; my boat will be down at Drivers wharf.... I love my wife, I do... I mean she's letting me keep all my toys... what a woman.... so I propose the following.
………I'll brim all three (switchable) tanks.... and we'll go for a play... start off on one tank... when we reach a suitable play area... set the throttle at 5,000, start the clock and switch to a fresh tank.... run at 5000 until the engine dies, stop the clock.... switch back to the first tank... restart motor..come home then brim the empty tank and see what we did...... for every litre per hour over 24 you pay £10 to a charity of my choice.... for every litre under, say double your figure and call it 48.. I'll pay £ 10 to a charity of your choice... for every litre OVER 48.. and remember that's double your figures... you pay £50 more to a charity of my choice... that’s reasonable, isn’t it?.. Oh and one more thing… If I’m wrong and my boat does very near your figure, not only will I apologise on this forum.. but I’ll take you for a meal and apologise in person…..is that fair ?.. as you know, I’m running a Humber 7.0 in “light” trim with a 21” prop supplied, fitted and set up by the dynamic duo of Frank and Andy at Humber. The boat hull will be clean and polished…..

[Jono]

Originally Posted by donutsina911

dont think RIVA deserves all this - all he did was set up the testing, reported back on the "facts" (misprints and dodgy flo guages maybe) and gave his two penny worth on each engine.

Not quite.... he then proceeded to slate those who questioned the figures as not "knowing their arse from their elbow"... and at that I DO take offence..... I know where my arse is as well as the next man.. I spend long enough talking through it.....

[Poly]

Originally Posted by donutsina911

dont think RIVA deserves all this - all he did was set up the testing.

I think thats the point - if the results are misleading.

[donutsina911]

i meant set up the testing as in he facilitated it by providing the ribs, not being the person responsible for the accuracy of the guages etc

[Poly]

well he seems to be going to a lot of effort to defend the results if he took no part in the testing... ...however if RIVA didn't actually perform the tests and took offence at my previous remarks I appologise.

[GED]

Don't you just love this forum site!!!!!!!!!

[Melampus]

Why does RIVA presume that everyone on this forum is a complete moron? it seems he can't take a very reasonable enquiry about the situation without insulting people......amazing from someone who needs these 'arses and elbows' to keep him in business

[donutsina911]

i dont think he does.

david made an incorrect assumption that separate flow meters were used and questioned the quoted rev range and fuel consumption based on his personal experience. Riva, on the basis of being involved in the testing, knowing that a single flow gauge was used and relying upon published suzuki figures said:

"its a hard choice , the test was fair and exact to each engine . and it would be better if people did not think they knew there arse from there elbow . and asked first"

seems pretty fair to me, although with hindsight it appears suzuki have cocked up and there is a disparity in the fuel figures.

As an aside, could the difference in fuel consumption between the test and other users experience be down to the ballistic hull and set up? My ballistic is very light on fuel (not 24lph,but far better than 50plh) and wondered if this may have contributed to it?

[Jono]

Originally Posted by donutsina911

"its a hard choice , the test was fair and exact to each engine . and it would be better if people did not think they knew there arse from there elbow . and asked first"

seems pretty fair to me, ....

Does it? A simple and polite "Dave, we only used one flow meter for the test" would have suficed, surely? You expect someone whose income depends on selling boats to have more common sense than to be outright rude to folks, who are, after all the boat buying public? Then to continue to beligerently comment that we need to ask Suzuki if the 8,100 figure is incorrect, when at least three or four of us have these engines ourselves? Once you go down that route, you must expect people to pour scorn on the tests themselves... after all if a boat dealer, who set these tests up, can't see the glaring inaccuracies, what faith should the rest of us put in the rest of the figures in the test? Your theory of the Ballistic boat hull being so much more fuel efficient than at least three other hulls, Mine, Ian's, Rene's could hold some water (no pun intended..sorry ), but as the discrepancy was so vast between similar engines on the same set up, it would put the Verado in a pretty poor light if it was mounted on another hull... if the Suzuki was more than twice as efficient on the Ballistic hull, then does it follow that we could expect to see a fuel consumption of over 150 litres an hour from the Verado mounted on any one of "our" hulls?

[Jimbob]

I got hold of Susuki, it took me a while

The revs is 6100 not 8100, which i think someone else confirmed

I suppose for me, if i had not so much interest and just wanted an engine then the , price and potential fuel economy would have probably pointed me to the Susi, However it seems that some users know this figure in real life to be different.

I think having 4 boats the same was great and hats off to RIVA to be able to do this, and maybe to conclude we should suggest a re-test with an agreement to the set-up ++++ so that when we get the figures back we will all say that it was a fair test, which some people claerly not in agreement with

Or, stick them all in a lab under rev/load conditions

[Pete7]

I hope to pick up a copy of RI tonight to see what all the fuss is about, although I note that you could probably buy a small house in South Wales for the prices some of the manfacturers are charging for these engines.

You have to feel for RI and HMS, afterall it was only a year ago we gave him a hard time for consistantly carrying out reviews of 4x4 in a rib magazine. Now he tries a side by side review of big engines and he is still getting a hard time. Just a shame they got the figures wrong having gone to all that effort. So Hugo perhaps you could publish a correction to the figures if its just a typo, or even take Jono up on his offer and test his Suzi to confirm how fuel efficient these engines are.

Second thoughts, Jono why not write up a review for RI on your engine with the figures, you could even invite Suzuki down to comment on how efficient there engines are. I am sure they would be delighted with the publicity of 7mpg and they could explain how they get so much more power from a gallon of petrol whilst the likes of Yamaha and Mercury stuggle with probably 1 lpm

Pete

[Jono]

Originally Posted by Pete7

although I note that you could probably buy a small house in South Wales for the prices some of the manfacturers are charging for these engines.

Yeah... when I was a "pup" you could have bought anywhere in Tredegar for that price... unfortunately, now you'll only be able to afford a small stone farm building... with a small amount of land... for renovation in rural France...

Originally Posted by Pete7

You have to feel for RI and HMS, afterall it was only a year ago we gave him a hard time for

No I don't. If a publication publishes figure that are glaringly wrong, especially to HMS, who I believe has vast experience and, if he read the article prior to publishing, should have picked it up. Even if the figures were right, as they are so "unbelievable", it would have been reasonable to put a note in the text, surely? That way, us Doubting Thomas types wouldn’t have raised the question... I appreciate that mistakes do happen, and I'm not having a pop at RI or HMS, because they have made no comment. I AM having a pop at RIVA because of his attitude when the question was raised. "Ask Suzuki if their figure of 8,100 was wrong"... Oh, Please!

Originally Posted by Pete7

So Hugo perhaps you could publish a correction to the figures if its just a typo, or even take Jono up on his offer and test his Suzi to confirm how fuel efficient these engines are.

Second thoughts, Jono why not write up a review for RI on your engine with the figures, you could even invite Suzuki down to comment on how efficient there engines are. I am sure they would be delighted with the publicity of 7mpg and they could explain how they get so much more power from a gallon of petrol whilst the likes of Yamaha and Mercury stuggle with probably 1 lpm

Pete

Pete, whilst, as you know, I do like the sound of my own voice, I am afraid my "writing articles days" are long over... it doesn't pay enough.... and I have expensive hobbies to finance and otherwise waste my time on.... Perhaps, it would be a simple matter for HMS to say whether he feels the figures were correct, or that a re-test may be done?

We ALL make mistakes... it's the way things are dealt with after that shows a person's metal.....

[Cookee]

Originally Posted by Jimbob

I got hold of Susuki, it took me a while

The revs is 6100 not 8100, which i think someone else confirmed

I suppose for me, if i had not so much interest and just wanted an engine then the , price and potential fuel economy would have probably pointed me to the Susi, However it seems that some users know this figure in real life to be different.

I think having 4 boats the same was great and hats off to RIVA to be able to do this, and maybe to conclude we should suggest a re-test with an agreement to the set-up ++++ so that when we get the figures back we will all say that it was a fair test, which some people claerly not in agreement with

Or, stick them all in a lab under rev/load conditions

What did they say about the fuel consumption figures?


You did ask didn't you?

[Jimbob]

Sorry i did not, i just figured i would close one debate

I dont think they do these figures?

[Scary Des]

Originally Posted by donutsina911

......david made an incorrect assumption that separate flow meters were used and questioned .... fuel consumption based on his personal experience. ....

David in fact said

Originally Posted by davidmanning

..... Personally, I wouldn't place too much faith in the quoted figures because of the use of four different Floscan units instead of accurately measured fuel containers for each run....

The point David made is valid, if you run the engine off a calibrated container you would know exactly what the engine is using.
The trouble with flow meters is that they can be inaccurate if you get air bubbles in the fuel or if the flow rate changes very quickly or if there is dirt in the system or if the fuel is warmer or colder, or if the RH is high or low etc etc etc.

Flowscan also manipulates the results, it counts pulses but displays lph (and others rates) these results are smoothed and averages and without knowing how it is done it is difficult to set much store by them.

Rather than trying to use pseudo science to show the difference between these engines it would have been better to do an ‘on the day’ test of how far each boat could get on 250 ltrs with the boats running abreast across the channel. At least this way each boat would have seen the same conditions and speeds (more or less) and the last one to run out would defiantly win Des

[Milan]

and the last one to run out would defiantly win Des [/QUOTE]

Or lose depending on your point of view how do you get these four boats home without petrol bearing in mind you may need 1000 ltrs

[Scary Des]

Originally Posted by Milan

......
Or lose depending on your point of view how do you get these four boats home ........

Could be the start of a new article for RI on 'How we got rescued from the channel' Would make more interesting reading than some of the other drivel Des

[Roy Smith]

Just booked my 250 F/Stroke Yamaha in for its first service 10 hour With
BHG at Lymington
R.I says that the serivicing is then every 50 hours when in fact its every 100 hours and BHG says its a two year warranty Not a Three year warranty as published
More mistakes?. I wonder if there is a poor sod out there who has purchased an engine on the strength of this report. going back to fuel figures, i have always found that if you fill to the brim do your test refill devide ltr by gps miles you wont go far wrong.

[DM]

Originally Posted by GED

Don't you just love this forum site!!!!!!!!!

Dunno what you're laughing at Mr. GED.

The Etec results are horseshit as well.

Originally Posted by Jimbob

I dont think they do these figures?

Look on the Suzuki US website. At 5000rpm 57litres per hour.

DM

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Scary Des

David in fact said
The trouble with flow meters is that they can be inaccurate if you get air bubbles in the fuel or if the flow rate changes very quickly or if there is dirt in the system or if the fuel is warmer or colder, or if the RH is high or low etc etc etc.

Even if they all used the same calibrated flow meter, and it worked correctly, did they all use the same calibrated Tachometer? Presumably someone would have noticed that the suzi wasn't reaching the "expected" 8100 rpm at FOT?