I brought this up to Mark, our harbor owner tonight. He asked a good question:

"What about airplanes?"

That's exactly how I intend to deal with this.

I think boat builders have a stock pile of engines now or they will order engines with production dates before 12/31/08 for the california dealers, and build boats that way.
I heard it's a $4000.00 increase on the price to the consumer after 1/1/09 if engine is built past that date.
Inside info sort of.

That right there is the biggest crock of crap i have ever seen. Acording to a 2006 DOT study, there were an estimated 250,851,833 registered passenger vehicles in the United States. That's cars, trucks, and 6.6 million motorcycles.
250 million, 850 thousand.

Those are used almost daily, as we consume (to all sources, right at 300 million gallons of gasoline (plus nearly 200 million gallons diesel fuel).

Boats are an occasional use item, and as such, would have to be horrifically sloppy, and in huge numbers, to get anywhere near 1/4 of the emissions output of road vehicles.
Show me the study, because I so far have not found it on the web.

Not to mention that virtually all of this new emissions level B.S. is being driven by the ID-ten-T poeple (ID10T) who actually believe, contrary to all historical and scientific fact, that Man is causing Global Warming to occur with his carbon emissions (topic for a different thread, but you can see my opinion on THAT belief).

As far as parts failures go, I have had FAR MORE failures of sensors on every vehicle I have owned in the last 20 years, than failures of ANY type, on any of the simple old school vehicles I have.
Wife's Blazer has gone thru 2 O2 sensors, and a MAF sensor in the last year, Fan clutch too.
My F-150 has gone thru 1 O2 sensor, the switching on the brakes to the cruise controll (recall for repairs becasue it has set trucks on fire before), and a fuel pump (in the tank).
The '92 Chrysler 5th Ave went thru the O2 sensors once, and was scrapped when the fuel pump went (in tank).
My old Ninja is sidelined with a bad Ignition controll box (pack of cigarettes costing $500), after replacing the mag pickups a few years back, and the coils.

Go ahead. I'll wager few people here do LESS maintenance to their boats than I do, because I have virtually nothing to break or fail.

How many threads on here are started by someone with a "warning beeper" of some kind, indicating a failure or impending failure of some part that I do not even have on a running boat? 90% of them.

Lowrider, my 30-yr-old old relic jet boat lost one fuel pump, after 25 years, one ignition coil, after 26 years, and one set of points died before replacement (3rd set in 28 years).

My even older relic Honda CB750F runs perfectly after 33 years, on what just may be, the original points (I bought it 5 years ago).

I will virtually guarantee that the cat-manifolds will NOT be a user-maintainable item, fully sealed 9just like car ones are), and from what I have seen of them, raw water cooled, or at least, cooled however the engine is. When one corroded thru, expect $5,000 replacement manifold sets.
At least for $3,600 I expect performance headers.

I won't mention how little carbon build up was in my 454 when I took it apart winter of 2004/5.

Not a chance. MAYBE 10% max. 30% idle time is idle 10 minuites for every 25 you drive (thus totalling 35 minuites). If you cruise somewhere an hour, that means 27 minuites idle time (14 minuites at each end?).
Now, if you troll fishing, OK, I'll let ya have it in that case. Otherwise, no.

And last but not least,
This just smacks of "do it for the children".
Ok, lets just be safe, as safe as possible, no risks at all:

Internal engines are replace by electrics (No Co emissions).

No batteries (especially under sea-water leak, emit Chlorine gas, far deadlier than CO). 100% Solar power drive juice.

All drives either become jets (no external moving parts to cut anyone) or all propelers are to be made of NERFfoam.

There, no more CO deaths, gas poisoniongs, electrocutions, OR prop-maimings/killings.

Now, drownings:
Everyone wears, at all times, an environment suit (hypothermia), lined with chain-mail (shark bite), and a fully inflated Type 1 PFD (face up floatation).
There, no more drownings too.

Safety is safety.

Now, of to go Dove hunting, "safely". LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!

That's OK D-Rod, you buy the first new low-emissions cat-manifolded boat, and test it out for us all.

I'm lookin foreward to that 10% more fuel mileage.

Lets revisit this discussion in 8 years. If you're against technology, so be it. But not everyone is. So if you want old school, then just buy old school stuff. Don't complain that others care to move forward.

By the way, I just located, that there are estimated (as of 2001), 17 million pleasure boats in the US, used on a part time basis, compared to those 251 million vehicles.


Boats comprise 6.7% of the vehicles in this country.

Boats are used MAYBE 10% of the time the wheeled vehicles are.

6.7% running 10% as often, or 10% as long, emit 25% of the emissions.

As an army Colonel used to say "Horse Pucky!".

So you're implying the numbers are bogus correct?

He's not implying the EPA's numbers are bogus, he is SAYING the numbers are bogus. And with the numbers he provided, it's hard to argue.

25% does seem a vary hard too believe. The number of engine hours per year for the engines covered has to be very small percentage compared to automobile engine hours per year. The engines covered would need to be pumping out a whole lot more pollution per hour than an automobile to be 25%.

If 25% were accurate, we've been ignoring lot's of low hanging fruit for way too many years!

I didn't notice, does that 25% include atv, lawnmower, snowblower, weed wacker, etc? Not that I think that would make it to the 25% mark, but it would edge it up a bit.

Yes I think it does, CB. If you think about it, there are tons of small engines around. If you look at the marine world, the fuel burn rate is very high too.

You weren't the only one D-Rod, I simply stated "the engines covered" in my post. Also, FR mentions lawn mowers in his post.

I'd like to see how they came up with the 25% number.

Good point HB. I have edited my previous post. I agree, it would be interesting to see the data they used to come up with the 25%. I don't doubt its accuracy though.

We burn about 21 GPH during cruise on the boat, I would surely burn 5-15% more fuel during cruise instead of having a CAT engine.

In a previous posting about production engines manufactured before the cut-off, I know that is how one manufacture got around the Jan 2008 deadline for CAT engines.

Sure wish we had some owners with CAT engines on this board to see well they're holding up and IF there are any problems ??