Back to the main site

Is SPS upgrade worth it if using boat purely for cruising

C

ChainGang

Member
Messages
8
Reaction score
11
Hi All,
I currently have a 2008 Bennington 2050GS with a 40hp honda 4 stroke that I purchased 3 years ago when I bought my lake house. We use it for cruising around the chain of lakes, beaching it at sandbars, late night cruises etc. I also have a v-drive wakesurf/ski boat so we don't have any intention of using the pontoon for water sports. My main reason for the upgrade of the pontoon is a bigger engine to get from one end of the chain to the other faster when necessary, get rid of the current carpeting on the floor, upgrade to the simtex upholstery etc.
I am currently considering the following options: the 20SLGX with 25" tubes, the Yamaha 90 & lifting strakes, the 20SLGX with the sps package and a yamaha 115 (approx $3,500 more).

I could also go with the value package 22SVSR series (need to be sure it fits on my current lift) with the Yamaha 115 & sps at roughly the same price as the 20SLGX but would lose some other options, bells and whistles etc. The 22SVSR with the Yamaha 150 & sps package will end up about $1000-$1500 more than any of them again very few other options available on the value series though.

I guess my question is has anyone else been in this same situation? Any other pros/cons I may be missing? I know reading the threads everyone says the sps/150 is the way to go but it seems to be mainly for the purpose of watersports and towing. For just cruising purposes is the bigger engine really worth it. If I could afford a 21 or 22SLX with the sps/150 I would do it but trying to keep cost down as much as possible (very difficult!).

Thanks!
 
It depends a lot on the body of water. If it gets rough and choppy then it's definitely worth it. However, if it's a relatively calm body of water it won't be worth it. I'm not sure if a 115 would really be enough hp to take advantage of the sps anyway. I think the 150 with sps is worth it for better cruising fuel economy over the 115. I've had a 115 on a 21ssrx and have a 150 on a 23ssbxp with sps. The 150 uses about 1 gallon per hour less fuel than the 115 did at cruising speeds of around 15 to 20.
 
Thanks for the helpful response. I have heard before that the 150 has better fuel economy than the 115 at regular cruising speeds.
I am on a chain of 9 lakes, the biggest 2 lakes on the chain are 1100 acres each and relatively calm. Like any lakes, they can get choppy at times and with my current 40 and a full load it wasn't a great ride during those choppy times. I also found that the 40hp engine was quite challenging to dock on very windy days with the lack of power. I am guessing the more power the better as far as that goes.
 
I initially had a 2 toon Bennington with a 115 and was very disappointed with the ride. We water tested a new one with sps and was sold. It is night and day difference. We were on a small lake in Michigan at the time too. The sweet spot is something with sps and a 150.
 
By far the most economical way I can find to get the 150/sps is on the 22SVSR. Probably worth sacrificing the bells and whistles of the sxl and just go with that even for just cruising. Appreciate the input
 
ChainGang said:
By far the most economical way I can find to get the 150/sps is on the 22SVSR. Probably worth sacrificing the bells and whistles of the sxl and just go with that even for just cruising. Appreciate the input
Click to expand...
I think either way with your uses you will be fine with the SPS whether going with the 115 or 150. For what your doing, just cruising the lakes and beaching, the 115 is really fine when paired with that SPS hull. It will be a really smooth ride, with a little bit of oomph when needed. The main cruising related difference is probably the fuel efficiency while cruising being better on the 150 per the comment above. Otherwise, the 115 will push that size SPS pretty nicely when no water sports are involved.

How many people and how weighted down do you get typically? Some of the bells and whistles can be pretty darn nice, particularly when pontooning. What bells and whistles are you giving up if you go SVSR SPS 150 vs. SLGX SPS 115? Of course, most company wont notice half those bells and whistles as much as you will. They’ll just enjoy being out on the water with you, and will focus on that and the lake. Darn trade offs!
 
Typically 3-5 of us on board but occasionally up to 8.
From what I can tell if I go with the 22 value series I lose the upgraded furniture look (same material though), RGB interior lights, fancier helm chair, side panels don't come all the way up fencing etc. You basically don't have all the option choices like the sx (not to say you can't add after the boat is built). It doesn't even come with docking light option.
 
ChainGang said:
Typically 3-5 of us on board but occasionally up to 8.
From what I can tell if I go with the 22 value series I lose the upgraded furniture look (same material though), RGB interior lights, fancier helm chair, side panels don't come all the way up fencing etc. You basically don't have all the option choices like the sx (not to say you can't add after the boat is built). It doesn't even come with docking light option.
Click to expand...
Thats the drawback of the value, you lose the customizable options which, in my opinion, the the main reason to have a boat built. Have you built the boat you want with the engine and model extras and have a dealer price it out? You wont pay the MSRP you see on the website and maybe the dealer price wont be as high as you think
 
Ive priced it out on Benningtons website and passed it along to the salesman I have been working with to give me a quote on several options. He kind of indicated the price difference from MSRP will depend on the model, but it doesn't sound as though it will be far off from the MSRP if at all. I am guessing partially because I am not looking at the very high end & there is less wiggle room & partially because it's a bad time of year to to buy as they seem to be selling like crazy right now & I believe this dealer has almost all their orders filled for the season. The price will, however, will include freight, dealer expenses etc. which I'm guessing are around $3,000. I already told him I expect the pricing to be well under MSRP but we'll see. I should hear from him soon!
 
I wouldn't do a regular dual-toon ever again after having a proper tritoon. We're on a chain of lakes, and if the weather got rough with more than 5 people on board we'd have problems with weight distribution (front heavy) and taking water over the bow. I had a 115 and it would max out at 22 mph or so when loaded, meaning it would take more than an hour to get from one end of the chain to the other (luckily we're right in the middle).

It's shocking how well our ESP hull handles waves. I was worried about ride quality, but I think our new boat rides much smoother than our old one.

I'd say go for the extra toon.
 
ChainGang said:
Ive priced it out on Benningtons website and passed it along to the salesman I have been working with to give me a quote on several options. He kind of indicated the price difference from MSRP will depend on the model, but it doesn't sound as though it will be far off from the MSRP if at all. I am guessing partially because I am not looking at the very high end & there is less wiggle room & partially because it's a bad time of year to to buy as they seem to be selling like crazy right now & I believe this dealer has almost all their orders filled for the season. The price will, however, will include freight, dealer expenses etc. which I'm guessing are around $3,000. I already told him I expect the pricing to be well under MSRP but we'll see. I should hear from him soon!
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats true. The higher up the model, the more wiggle room in MSRP because of the higher profit margin for them. I shopped 4 dealers for my build and I did find about a 3,000 dollar swing between the high and low prices.
 
Agree with most of the above (we have various other water craft too) and your current pontoon is a bit heavy for only 40 HP. A couple points are worth mentioning: (1) I have never attempted to put 8 adults on our 2080 RL. Fully expect it would be short of both floatation and power (have 90 HP with only a 95 max rating and two 23" toons). Any of the options you mentioned would be a useful (dare I say required) upgrade (25" tubes are significant). (2) What do you consider cruising? We spend hours at 5 MPH or less on our ~18,000 acre lake (~20 miles long). In any event we will never have a pontoon where fuel economy is of any consideration because we are a multi-toy family and our use of a pontoon includes a lot of time on some island beach (very little floating in open water). (3) Strakes with 90 HP are questionable bang-for-buck especially if you are running anything other than light. More power is needed to make a decent transition from displacement to planing. (4) IF a choice must be made between more power of more stuff, seems to me that, just like us, the call goes to more stuff. Meaning: the 115 with whatever pontoon you want to afford has to be a major player...otherwise, just go high dollar and be done with it!

Hope it's obvious that I might have a different opinion if our lake time include towing a singular water craft for only weekend (read crowed) use.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the great advice, I really appreciate all the input from experienced boaters!

It looks like I will be going with a 21SLX with a 115 EPP. When I got the quotes back the dealer was able to mark that model down by far the most for some reason, so I was able to get everything the wife and I really want inside, and still enough power for what we use it for. I REALLY want the SPS/150 combo but just cant stretch it that far at this point. There could be worse problems to have!
Thanks again
 
ChainGang said:
Thanks for all the great advice, I really appreciate all the input from experienced boaters!

It looks like I will be going with a 21SLX with a 115 EPP. When I got the quotes back the dealer was able to mark that model down by far the most for some reason, so I was able to get everything the wife and I really want inside, and still enough power for what we use it for. I REALLY want the SPS/150 combo but just cant stretch it that far at this point. There could be worse problems to have!
Thanks again
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t bother with the EPP. I think the major issue given your described useage is SPS or not. It seems like you’ll be good with either the 115 or 150 for your use. The SPS is significantly better in so many respects as compared to the EPP. There is a reason they are giving the bigger discount on that EPP instead of the SPS. Just saying...
 
Vikingstaff said:
I wouldn’t bother with the EPP. I think the major issue given your described useage is SPS or not. It seems like you’ll be good with either the 115 or 150 for your use. The SPS is significantly better in so many respects as compared to the EPP. There is a reason they are giving the bigger discount on that EPP instead of the SPS. Just saying...
Click to expand...
Yeah I was wondering about that. Maybe better off just adding strakes.
 
lakelifeMN said:
I think the point is with the SPS tritoon you will get more buoyancy (which will help when you have 5-8 people) and better ride. If you’re just using it to cruise around and trying to stretch your budget you would be happier with SPS with the 115.
Click to expand...
Yup, this is what I meant. And that added buoyancy with the SPS will allow the 115 to have a more positive impact on getting you from point A to B when cruising with the group if bad weather comes upon you, or what not. More so than 2 toons, or the EPP. That’s all.
 
Have you checked out the 21SL?
It's the same furniture as the 20SLG and, with the SPS, the 150HP rated engines are available.

Might be a good compromise for standard and optional features between the 22SV and the 20SLGX that you are considering.

21SL
SPS weight (no motor) = 2504
People cap = 12
LOA = 21' 11.5'
Max HP = 150

20SLGX
SPS weight (no motor) = 2046
People cap = 11
LOA = 20' 11.5"
Max HP = 115

22SVSR
SPS weight (no motor) = 2928
People cap = 12
LOA = 22' 11.5"
Max HP = 200
 
Last edited:
We started with a standard 2 tube pontoon with only a 50 on it.....yeah we got caught in some pretty nasty storms that came in on us that first year. Then we started shopping for a new boat we noticed that a majority of the boats on our lake had 140+HP and were tri-toons. Our dealer basically said the sps package coupled with a 150+HP motor seemed to be the sweet spot for an all around boat that could handle watersports (tubing and even skiing) or just slow sunset cruise. We bought our 2014 gsr2250 with the sps and 150 combo and couldn't be happier. Has enough power to tube with no problems and will run a tick under 40 (gps said 38.9) if you need to get off the lake in a hurry. Even though it will run almost 40 it still has no problems slow idle speed cruising all afternoon if you want to. The yamaha 150 we have doesn't do to bad on fuel either. At our normal day cruising/goofing around speed of 18-19mph the boat is loafing along at 3K rpms. At that pace we average a couple weekends out of a tank of fuel....not empty by any means since I normally fill between a 1/4 and a 1/2 tank. Yes we use our boat quite a bit......even though we are just weekenders and our summers in ohio aren't that long we've logged just over 650 hours on it so far.

I look at it this way when it comes to what ever size motor you decide on. You can always throttle back a bigger motor to just slow cruise but it's real hard to get any more speed out of a smaller motor when the throttle is already pinned wide open.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top