Dawn of the supercharger

By ROBIN BAILEY

Launched at the Miami Boat Show in February with much blaring of promotional trumpets, the new Verado family of four-stroke Mercury outboard engines is doing the business on the water around the world.

There was a degree of scepticism when the company billed Verado as "the most sophisticated marine propulsion system in history". Having been tested by the international marine media and the Mercury dealer network, the Verado is living up to the hype.

The research and development effort that went into what the company called Mercury Project X, was immense. It took five years and the budget was US$100 million ($158 million). It began with two years of computer analysis, running the engines in computer simulation long before the first engine was built.

The aim of the designers was to ensure the engine was truly revolutionary and thoroughly developed. The company enlisted the support of the Europeans BMW and Porsche and the British companies Lotus and Cosworth.

The objective was to take advantage of the ideas and advancements these companies had developed.

Mercury's mantra: don't reinvent the wheel - use what others have successfully developed and, more importantly, perfected.

This phase was followed by two years of engine development that included constant computer analysis. To establish the extreme parameters of every component, parts were tested and re-tested.

Then came a 300-hour wide-open throttle test. It involved the equivalent of six years' running for the average New Zealand boater, albeit at full throttle.

Each Verado piston travelled 17,515km up and down the bore, there were 54 million combustion cycles for each cylinder, 108 million turns of the crankshaft, 226 million turns of the supercharger and at 6000rpm/60mph the engine would have travelled 15,630 nautical miles.

All that added up to a lifetime and a half of boating - without problems. Mercury had built 194 test engines for a research programme that had taken 293,000 man hours.

It had achieved everything Brunswick Corporation CEO Pat Buckley had claimed at the launch in Miami: "With this project Mercury has become the driver of change in the industry. From today everything else is old technology."

The Verado is the world's first production outboard to feature a supercharger which significantly boosts power by forcing a higher air volume into the combustion chamber than that delivered by a naturally aspirated system.

Supercharging provides the best possible combination of packaging, throttle response and thermodynamics management. The system enables Verado to create outstanding horsepower with a smaller-displacement block. It is also quiet.

At idle the engine can't be heard by most passengers and at wide-open throttle the loudest sound is the wind or the waves. Part of the reason is the use of a patented air induction system and high-performance acoustic foam lining.

The outboard has an integrated electronics system that combines the Mercury Smartcraft data with the fish-finder and chartplotter electronics from Navman, the Auckland company that now shares the same parent company as Mercury, Brunswick Corporation.

The system allows the boater to access engine performance and control data that provides integrated systems from a single Navman unit that shows where you are, where the fish are, what fuel you are using and set trolling speed.

Detailed engine fault diagnostics with varying severity levels give the ability to make informed decisions on the water, in effect an on-board outboard mechanic.

After all this development work, how do Verado prices stack up against the opposition?

Mercury New Zealand CEO Terry McDonald says the range has been pitched to be competitive and it is different because it comes with its own electro-hydraulic power steering and the Smartcraft system.

"Horsepower for horsepower it is only marginally dearer and consumer comment shows boaters are happy with what they get for their money."