rebirth!

[riveredge]

My boat has been out of commission now for over 6 weeks, due mostly to my complete lack of free time. Long story short, when it started making a knocking sound in the engine (and the sound started getting worse), we took it apart to find a scored cylinder. The engine has a bit of an unknown past, including one alleged "rebuild." It went out for a proper rebuild last week and came back bored .020 over and with lots of new internal parts.

The other night a friend helped me re-assemble the parts of the engine that the machine shop didn't have (we only sent them a block and heads), and we got it back in the boat, only to find it wouldn't fire. Being late at night, we gave up. It turns out that I had just put in the distributor 180 degrees off, so the timing was the opposite of what it needed to be. I work with several knowledgeable mechanics, and they have been instrumental in this process to say the least.

In any case, we're firing it up tonight (I hope!) and if all goes well, a boat ride will follow. I've been the king of boat borrowing - I'm lucky to have lots of friends with inboards - but I'm psyched to be back in my own boat again.

I attached a pic of the boat from before the fiasco...

Cheers!

[Mani]

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

[Okie Boarder]

Sweet. Yeah, keep us all posted.

[wotan2525]

Congrats.... 6 weeks isn't too bad, really! Mine was out of the water for over 2 years... Man it is SWEEEET when you get to fire it back up the first time. Make sure you break in that cam the right way!

[riveredge]

I managed to somehow not have a camera or phone lastnight for the startup of the rebuilt engine, but it did fire right up and it ran beautifully through 20 - 30 minutes of initial warmup, and even better when I launched it and went across the lake. My dog was my only companion on the first ride but she loved it almost as much as me. I couldn't be happier! Doing the work we did on our own balanced with the machine shop's work cut the cost in half overall, to about $2,500 total expense for a basically new engine. 1175 hours on the boat and counting...

[riveredge]

quick update, now that we have about 12 hours on the new engine: After a few hours of run time, I started running it harder and higher RPM, and every once in a while it would just die suddenly like someone had shut the key off. All the gauges stayed on, but there was no power to the fuel pump, and probably none to the coil (never got around to checking for spark). I found the 12 1/2 amp breaker to be tripped, which is the breaker for the computer. I checked thoroughly for shorted wires, incorrectly routed wires or sensors hooked up to the wrong thing, but the thing is it ran perfect right up until it tripped.
I replaced the fuel line between the lpfp and hpfp since it got a little tweaked in removal and re-installation, but that wasn't it either. Finally one night it wouldn't even start. So my friend started looking for something wrong, in the dark, of course. He saw a spark, right near the breaker in question, when I turned the key on and off. It turned out that one screw that holds wires onto the 12 1/2 amp breaker was loose. Apparently the extra electrical effort required to jump the gap was enough to trip it. 15 seconds with a screwdriver and it's been flawless ever since.
Of all the things to go wrong with a rebuilt engine, that's a pretty good one, but I guess it just goes to show you can never be too thorough.

[Mani]

Good stuff. Happy to know you're back out there having fun. :D

[87SunSportMikeyD]

Hey Riversedge I'm sorry that I haven't been following this thread all that closely. Then my engine started making a nasty knock too. We think it is a thrown rod or main bearing but we have not torn into it yet. I found a guy on Craigslist with a used/newly rebuilt longblock 351W for $950 and my mechanic started dropping it in on Monday. I will be able to keep the old engine and have it rebuilt or whatever. He is also putting in a new, larger starter, new transmission flex/damper plate, and a whole new distributor. Holy cow. Hoping to be out for $2000-2500. He said it may be done by this weekend.

Very happy to hear you are out on the water again. I have been out of commission all summer.