Lifetime of a Honda 40

El and Bill-

We bid your loyal departed 40 a very sweet adieu (heard about it at Cutter). We fondly remember her pushing the fabled Halcyon swiflty along with nary a whimper, in the beautiful playground, the Chesapeake, that we are lucky enough to have lapping at our back yard.

Good speed. And may the next 40 serve you so well, and be as lucky as the first to share the wonderful adventures you together shall share.

Cheers!
 
Yeah, I'm with Ken on this one...a matched set of new twins is really the only thing that makes sense, no?


KenMcC":7ht3pxbt said:
Hi, El & Bill,

JWith all those hours, and with all the great pleasure "Halcyon" has brought you, doesn't she deserve a brand new set of twins?

Hope you're back on the water soon.

Ken
Click to expand...
 
El and Bill,
I've always thought "twins" were the very best :wink: :female :female

Good cruising, and may the next set of twins take you to places where the wonderful experiences and great storys continue.

Robbi
 
Greg --

In our years of cruising Halcyon, we have had an engine failure three times (twice the fault of poor servicing and once due to engine failure). In those three times we came home on a single engine for a sum total of about 30 miles -- in over 20,000 miles of cruising. Neither time did we "try to run on-step" or find it necessay to be "limping fast as you can back to port." We happily chugged along at 5 knots (our speed in heavy seas, anyway). So we placed no "terrible load ... running the boat at planing speed trying to get home" -- we returned to port effortlessly. So not being properly propped for such a short time, at low rpm, put an insignificant load on our redundant engine.

Of course, having a redundant system adds complexity to a system -- as do all back-up systems, including your high-thrust kicker. So do back-up gps, radio, compass etc. systems on our boats. That complexity (and cost) we are willing to shoulder for additional security.

Your high-thrust kicker is a good system for you -- you might have a very long distance to run to get home and the need to get there quickly. Twin, matched, engines have proven to be a good system for us. And, as we said, every boater designs their boat according to their use of the boat. There isn't any "perfectly right" way, since all our purposes are somewhat different. Besides, if there weren't different ways we wouldn't have much to discuss on this engines subject -- and we wouldn't all be learning from each other.
 
Thanks all. This thread has been enjoyable and interesting for us to read. We appreciate the comments and suggestions. Yep, although for the sake of science (and our bank account) we'd like to run our remaining engine to the sunset end of the trail, we agree with those who have kindly suggested that it would be wise to replace both engines.

So, we've started another thread about the advantages (disadvantages) of the 40 or 50 engine. Thanks again for sharing your ideas, and yes, Robbi, after meeting your twin, we must agree that twins are the greatest!!
 
Final numbers on the Honda 2001 40hp engine (as one of twins, both with identical hours and miles):

4.18 nautical miles/gal 2.14 g/hour over the almost 2100 hours and almost 19,000 miles.

The twin of the deceased is still humming along and we'll give a summary for her numbers when she finishes her duty with us.

We thought these numbers might be useful for those of you with twin Honda 40's for your number crunching.

For most of her cruising, she had a ProPulse Composite 10,4" x 12-16 variable pitch prop, set at 14". She broke one blade off on a log in Canada, replaced quickly.
 
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