Hi Fellow Boaters

I have a Carver 404 with twin Mercruiser 7.4 V8 engines (340HP). The engines have around 400 hours each and with the exception of a valve assembly rebuild on one piston on the port side have always preformed well. My issue is::

* Since I first bought the boat two years ago, in order to maintain a center line on my sync gauge, I have always needed to run the port side engine about 200 to 300 rpm faster.
* Performance wise, it does not seem to have any impact on the boats propulsion performance.

My questions are:

* Is this common and just part of two different engines that operate and are tuned differently?
* Do others out there always have the same rpm at the sync gauges centerline?
* Is the point of the sync gauge that in fact in order to sync you do need to balance the engines performance and they will operate at different RPM in order to be in sync?
* Any other thoughts would be great.

Engines are not exactly my thing, so any thoughts explained at a fifth grade level would be great

Thanks
Rich