[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by Pearsonistic

Thanks all for your input.

I just found out that the price of the rebuilt atomic four is $5K plus $1K shipping plus $1K or more for install. So I'm looking at a minimum of $7K for a rebuilt Atomic four.

I also found that the rebuilds are ready and sitting on the shelf and I won't have to wait a month as I anticipated which diminishes my interest in an outboard.

Noboby thinks an outboard is a useful backup? Inboards are reliable enough, or outboards are ugly and/or unreliable?

NO, outboards aren't particularly useful on boats that were not designed with them in mind initially. The transom would probably need some significant reinforcement to support an outboard for propulsion use, and the outboard is likely to come out of the water in any kind of heavy weather... which is most likely when you would want the "backup" engine to work, since the primary problem most boats have with their in-board engines is gunk stirred up from the bottom of the tank and clogging the fuel filters in heavy weather. This is also far more of a problem with diesel, which can have algae grow along the water/diesel interface if any water is present in the tank. That generally doesn't affect gasoline as a fuel.