Despite Extra Weight & 20 Fewer Horses, Honda Holds Its Own

Volume 14
•
Number 6
•
June 2001

Many of the charts & tables found on this site are PDFs.

Despite Extra Weight & 20 Fewer Horses, Honda Holds Its Own

Speed-for-speed, the Honda 130 and Evinrude Ficht 150 get nearly equal mileage. Surprisingly, the DFI Ficht runs just as quietly on plane. The Honda is definitely cleaner ... we smell the difference.

With a 130-hp Honda, the Neptune 212 gets
mileage similar to the same boat with the 150-
hp Evinrude Ficht, though it loses some speed
and acceleration. We wish someone would
make a 150-hp four-stroke.

Since last summer, we’ve had three different outboards on our test boat, a 212 Neptune Walkaround (now built as the 212 Hydra-Sports Seahorse): a 150-hp Evinrude carbureted two-stroke, a 150-hp Evinrude DFI (Ficht Ram technology) and now a 130-hp Honda four-stroke. Still to come are the Mercury OptiMax and Yamaha DFI engines.

As we did with the Evinrude Ficht, we plan on running the Honda 130 hard to test its durability and rate its ease and cost of maintenance. The idea is to find out how these engines hold up over the course of a couple of seasons (the average boat owner runs his outboard 50 hours a year). The Ficht…

Subscriber login
Purchase selection, or begin your FREE 14-day trial subscription to powerboat-reports.com.
Click Here to download Adobe Acrobat