Jon Kaase Mercury offshore marine engine

 

 

 

 

At the Jon Kaase Race Engines booth at the 2016 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show they proudly displayed a bright yellow Mercury Racing QCV4 engine built to power the 50-foot long Miss Geico offshore catamaran racing boat.

 

Equipped with two of these 520-cubic inch engines, each generating 1650 horsepower, the 13,000 pound stern drive boat can attain speeds approaching 200 miles per hour. The team owns a total of six engines which in a constant race-ship-rebuild cycle.

 

Photo courtesy of  AMF Riviera Beach, LLC

 

The all-aluminum double overhead camshaft twin-turbocharged V8 engine was originally developed by Mercury Racing, a division of Mercury Marine specifically to power the massive off-shore speedboats. The engine is a bit large for automotive application as it measures almost three feet across from camshaft cover to camshaft cover and as shown at PRI weighed over 900 pounds.

 

 

The dual-overhead-cam cylinder heads use "finger followers" to activate the 32 valves (4 per cylinder). The camshafts are driven by three chains: one from the crank to a cam-drive sprocket, and then two chains drive the twin cams in each bank.

From the Mercury Racing factory without the wiring harness, electronic control unit and turbochargers the QCV4 crate engine is priced at $68,000. We will leave it to you the reader to guess the price of the engine shown by Kaase fitted with custom stainless steel headers and a custom Wilson  Performance intake manifold that featured twin intercoolers to feed the twin turbochargers.

Check out the boat at http://missgeicoracing.com/

Check out Jon Kaase at http://www.jonkaaseracingengines.com/

Photos by the author except as noted