Interesting offshore cat...

[LakeRacer99]

I don't know where to put this, I was scanning pics from old magazines and ran across this...Karl Koster's Cat raceboat with 2 3/4 merc outboards. That is correct 2 207cid motors and 1 142cid motor. Wonder what it was like trying to monitor those 3 Tachs...This was in 1983.

[Ron Hill]

This is one of those boats a man always wanted to drive in a race. Twin 300 HP Mercs and a single 2.4, I think EFI in the middle of the tunnel.

Karl Koster had me make a 4 blade for the middle motor to keep it from scattering. This is a true cat, no center pod. The middle motor ran in mostly air. There wasn't a lot of competition in the Outboard Division of Offshore then, but they usually won. It is a 30' Shadow Cat.

[Cp]

....I remember Karl giving the late great Bob Nordskog FITS with this tunnel hull. So much so that Bob had to create a V class and Cat class so he could continue to add to his tally of offshore victories. This was just the beginning of cats dominating offshore racing.

Ron - I think the HiPerf 3.4's were EFI's also. Raceman had one on an Allison raceboat, I believe. The production anchors were carbed.

[Raceman]

CP, actually I have both types of the high perf 3.4's. The one on the Allison is a T4 which is roughly the same as today's S3000's in terms of the way it's set up. (champ mid, speedmaster, timing locked at full advance, tighter heads) The long high perf 3.4's like the one on your brochure had EFI's, at least all that I ever saw did. As far as the carb, production engines rated at 300 HP, they were actually pretty fair motors when used within their capabilities. A friend who worked at Merc for years, many of them in warranty, told me that the incidence of warranty on the 3.4's was among the lowest, percentage wise, of anything Merc produced. The guys that put em on light, fast boats or ran em with the throttles bungied wide open on offshore boats, bouncin' em off rollers didn't have good result.

[Cp]

My misinformed opinion could have been due to the guy I knew behind the wheel of a 21 foot Concord that had one back in the 80's. He liked to run it well over 6000. He couldn't figure out why he couldn't keep anything above or below the midsection to stay together. You're right though, he did tend to try to run it like an offshore boat. Cp