Normal
3 gallons in any size boat would make me very nervous. That's maybe an hour or two of running hard with any outboard of reasonable size (15+hp). Doesn't take long at all to suck it down if you have some sort of incident, weather blowing in that slows your pace to a crawl, helping another boater in an emergency situation, taking on an additional passenger/cargo, a boat that's waterlogged or swamped, etc.I've been down the four stroke road with a 90hp EFI Merc. The EFI was great, it was very smooth, powerful, and stable at idle. Noise on plane was negotiable, you're going to have so much wind noise at speed that the outboard is already drowned out. But the weight, it was bad. That motor was 360ish pounds. My boat is rated for 90hp, but it was too much. Even the brace I had made for the transom began to crack. No amount of weight distribution is going to make up for essentially carrying around another person on the transom. The 50hp Evinrude I replaced it with is just shy of 200lbs.
3 gallons in any size boat would make me very nervous. That's maybe an hour or two of running hard with any outboard of reasonable size (15+hp). Doesn't take long at all to suck it down if you have some sort of incident, weather blowing in that slows your pace to a crawl, helping another boater in an emergency situation, taking on an additional passenger/cargo, a boat that's waterlogged or swamped, etc.
I've been down the four stroke road with a 90hp EFI Merc. The EFI was great, it was very smooth, powerful, and stable at idle. Noise on plane was negotiable, you're going to have so much wind noise at speed that the outboard is already drowned out. But the weight, it was bad. That motor was 360ish pounds. My boat is rated for 90hp, but it was too much. Even the brace I had made for the transom began to crack. No amount of weight distribution is going to make up for essentially carrying around another person on the transom. The 50hp Evinrude I replaced it with is just shy of 200lbs.
