Zordak learns about boat motors

If you have read my build thread on my 3rd Gen Firebird, I bought a boat. I got lucky it ran nice and does not leak much(less than a teaspoon for an hour on the water if that). So the wife is not thrilled with it as it is meant to ride up on plane rather than cut through the water so waves can be pretty bumpy(to which the wife objects). Anyways it was a calm day, no waves on the lake, and I take the wife on the boat and about 5 min out I notice it having a dead spot every 10 sec or so for about 1/2 sec after 1 0r 2 minutes of this I decide to turn 180 and head back for the boat ramp and the dead spot gets longer till it is about 1 sec of running and 5-10 sec of dead. Make it back to the ramp before it dies completely and take the boat home(wife very much relieved we made it back). I am figuring fuel delivery as in clogged line. when I check out the fuel system I see it has an oil filter sized fuel filter. Now the part number on the fuel filter is not facing me so I go to remove it and someone tightened it very tight as in even with a filter wrench it pulls the screws out of the transom(and no the transom is not rotten even though a 40+ year old boat) so I remove the filter assembly and find out it is a fuel filter water separator. replace with new and check out the rest of the system to make sure all is well. Fire up the motor and it still runs real rough. I notice the coil wire is sticking out a little and push it in and it won't even start. Check coil wire no continuity at all. So just for giggles and to make sure it is a points system I pull the cap. Huh plastic in the bottom of the dizzy. Ohhh the rotor is also broken, not enough to fall off but just enough to make it wobble. I make up a different coil wire out of the ends of the bad one and a length of old spark plug wire. Ok engine fires up but still runs rough. I new cap, rotor, points and condensor later it is running quite well. What about the bad plug wires? They are on order as the boat place only had very very expensive ones that would have increased the boat's value by 20%. Have new ones on order as well as plugs. So an internitant miss can bet a wobbly rotor. The only time I have had a bad rotor the vehicle would not run at all, which is why I thought fuel. O well live and learn something new.

When I first bought my boat from my neighbor, who seemed eager to be rid of it even though he had recently spent some money on it, I found that he had inadvertently switched the leads on the coils on one bank of the V4 engine.  Needless to say, it was not happy until I discovered and corrected this situation. 

Enjoy your boat! 

Welcome to the club. Old boats. Sheesh.   

 For peace of mind you may want to look into a towing policy if there is coverage on the lakes / water you plan to run on. Supposedly I'm covered with BoatUS even of they don't have their own boats on the lake, but I have yet to test it (knock on wood.)

I prefer the outboard version of madness. I don't trust old I/O combos. Check the rubber boot an bellows arounf the outdrive if you haven't already. If it goes it creates a BIG hole in the boat.

Most in/o or inboard engines are automotive based so often parts can be found at your local Oadzone NAPA.

Unless it is a reverse rotation Packard.

I've had a rotor go on me once.  I thought I blew the engine as I was doing my fair share of hooning when it decided to let go.  It wasnt a boat though, it was a 12a RX-7.  Weirdest rotor I've ever seen.
 

I have a separate policy for the boat. On the subject of parts I did a little research and found that careful consideration should be paid to the parts bought for an automotive engine converted for marine use. Special attention should be paid to fuel and spark as most I/Os have an enclosed engine and a fire on a boat is far worse than a fire in a car. Special dizzy, alternator, carb and starter.  

I went by a boat house this past week when I was doing some fishing. I think this family is old-school New England money. They've got the money to do just about anything exactly the way they want to do it. They have several boats in their boat house, including a beautiful vintage strip wood boat that's been carefully restored with age appropriate brass fittings and so on.

It's got a new four stroke Honda motor on the back. 

The owner of the property was down on the dock and we chatted a little bit. Really nice, friendly guy who apparently saw us pulling some floating trash out of the water and carting it off. I complimented him on the vintage boat and joked about having modern power, and he said something to the effect of "any vintage boat that's actually going to get driven needs a modern power plant. The only old, wooden boats that should have period correct motors are the ones in museums."

The point being- if you want to use your boat a lot, update your motor to the newest one you can.

In reply to zordak :

Don't mean to argue with you but one engine I worked on was nothing but a Chevy 2.  The only difference was a water heated intake manifold.

 This was along time ago and I am sure things have changed.

 sometimes a cross check will find that MARINE parts are more expensive.

I used to have an old Grew with a Mercruiser 188 (302 Ford with a 2bbl carb). The starter failed and a new one was over $400. I went to Canadian Tire and asked if they had a starter for a 73 Ford pickup with a 302 (estimated vintage of the boat since Canadian made boats before 1975 don't have hull numbers) . Yup, in stock, less than $100 out the door. IDENTICAL to the one I removed, not sealed or anything. The idea that items were converted for Marine use is quite often BS.

Run the bilge blower everytime before starting for a few minutes.  That is your best safety protection. That and avoiding carrying propane in the boat. There's a reason you see propane tanks secured to the swim platform on a lot of boats.

Marine parts are not necessarily “sealed” to be waterproof. 

Many of the changes are subtle, but important, and provide a reason for the price difference beyond just being “marine”:

- spark arresting measures in starters and alternators to prevent ignition of fuel vapor

- bronze and brass plugs and bushings to increase corrosion resistance of water pumps and wetted components  

- stainless steel instead of carbon steel

- different gasket materials to resist corrosion. Salt or brackish water will eat automotive headgaskets, leading to water getting into cylinders or the oil. 

So I’ll be “that guy”, and say stick with marine parts unless you are 100% certain they are identical to their automotive equivalent. It’s not worth the risk of fire, or having a preventable failure on the water. 

iceracer said:

In reply to zordak :

Don't mean to argue with you but one engine I worked on was nothing but a Chevy 2.  The only difference was a water heated intake manifold.

 This was along time ago and I am sure things have changed.

 sometimes a cross check will find that MARINE parts are more expensive.

I used to build a fair amount of marine engines and worked at a marina for years.

Water pump, distributor, spark arrestor air intake, screens in the alternator and starter, and water-cooled exhaust manifolds are marine.  The rest is straight off the automotive parts shelf.

New cap and rotor kit for my 3.0L Mercruiser is $16 on Amazon, but if I go to a marina and get the Quicksilver branded parts, its $65.  In fact, the starter that is on my 3.0L right now is a $28 parts store rebuild that I just put the spark arrestor screens from the old one into it.  At a marina they wanted $180.

I built plenty of 350s and 383s for boats using automotive cams, intakes, carbs, etc.

Little tidbit... if you want a carb intake for Vortec heads, just get a used marine intake from a Vortec-headed motor.  It is the same casting as the ZZ4 intake which is a fantastic intake.  $300 from GMPP, or $20 with bronze-lined water passages from a boat junkyard.

Reverse rotation hasn't been a thing since the 70s.  Full inboards and vee drives were sometimes reverse, but the real application for reverse rotation was with dual I/O applications from pre-70s.  Once the Bravo drive was built and they realized it worked in both directions (straight cut pinion gears), the need for the powerplant to be backwards was obsolete. Instead they just reversed the lever on the gear case of one so they selected opposite pinions.  Now if you get a dual engine boat, the prop reversing happens in the outdrive, not at the crankshaft.  Super easy and cheap to make the props spin opposite without all the engineering it takes to make the engine go the wrong way.

Having seen boats go boom by using automotive parts on sparky things, I do recommend using spark arrestors on all the electrical bits, but in many cases that just means that the vents in the starter/dizzy/alternator have screens epoxied or riveted in.  Transfer those screens to your new parts and you're good.

No Time said:

Marine parts are not necessarily “sealed” to be waterproof. 

Many of the changes are subtle, but important, and provide a reason for the price difference beyond just being “marine”:

- spark arresting measures in starters and alternators to prevent ignition of fuel vapor

- bronze and brass plugs and bushings to increase corrosion resistance of water pumps and wetted components  

- stainless steel instead of carbon steel

- different gasket materials to resist corrosion. Salt or brackish water will eat automotive headgaskets, leading to water getting into cylinders or the oil. 

So I’ll be “that guy”, and say stick with marine parts unless you are 100% certain they are identical to their automotive equivalent. It’s not worth the risk of fire, or having a preventable failure on the water. 

I agree and I'll add this.... marine water pumps are not really displacement pumps.  Most of the pumping comes from the lift pump in the outdrive.  The water pumps on marine engines are circulator pumps to keep stuff moving in the block.  They often have straight blades on the impellers and (a throwback to reverse rotation engines) they work in either direction.  Automotive pumps will either move too much water by augmenting the outdrive pump, or fight the outdrive pump if they're pumping the wrong way.  I have taken pumps apart and re-used a marine impeller on an automotive pump, but often times the impeller is crusty.  This is a good application for a true marine water pump.

In the case of Mercruiser and Volvo small block chevys, there is further motivation to use a marine pump because they use the corvette-length shaft/pulley setup as opposed to a short or long.  Just putting on a truck water pump will make the pulleys not line up.  You can get creative with pulley offset (which I have done) but it just makes sense to get a marine pump.

I thank all of you for your opinions. I agree that most of the marine grade parts are made for spark control or corrosion resistance. I will think about being safe as to what to use for a replacement parts going forward. The tune up kit I bought was $40.00 for a cap, rotor, points and condenser, which I thought was reasonable. $120.00 for a set of regular grade wires for a 4 cyl I thought was a bit too much.

Curtis said:

Little tidbit... if you want a carb intake for Vortec heads, just get a used marine intake from a Vortec-headed motor.  It is the same casting as the ZZ4 intake which is a fantastic intake.  $300 from GMPP, or $20 with bronze-lined water passages from a boat junkyard.

 

Wait. Are you saying that a marine intake will fit L31 Vortec heads?

Yes. If it is from a Vortec/carb application. The SBCs used in boats are mostly straight off the shelf GM crate longblocks.  Then they add their goodies to make it marine. Boats used carbs far longer than cars, and they switched to Vortec heads for the advantages.  There are millions of boats out there with 096 heads and a ZZ4 carb intake.

They are the same 10185063 casting number, just plated with bronze in the water crossover.  Some manufacturers like OMC would often machine off the GM casting number and put their own stamping on the pad to hide that little tidbit.

Now... not ALL of them are the ZZ4 intake.  Volvo/Penta cast their own version of the 063 with their name on it and a different casting number.  Some use their own casting.  Many of them bought from Cyclone or Engine Solutions.

The intake on the last Vortec engine I built for an 83 Baja had both the Volvo Penta in the casting as well as the 063 casting number.  Painted charcoal grey with brass water linings.

Another common swap is the marine EFI vortec intake because they have external/traditional injectors instead of the truck's spider injectors.

In reply to Curtis :

This is great information! Thank you. I might have to apply a bit of google-fu to this- I've got a set of L31 heads in unknown condition, and the intakes I saw to use them on my '90 C1500 weren't cheap, so I was thinking that might be a dead end.




 

zordak said:

I thank all of you for your opinions. I agree that most of the marine grade parts are made for spark control or corrosion resistance. I will think about being safe as to what to use for a replacement parts going forward. The tune up kit I bought was $40.00 for a cap, rotor, points and condenser, which I thought was reasonable. $120.00 for a set of regular grade wires for a 4 cyl I thought was a bit too much.

BTW - to get rid of the points, you can get a Pertronix module pretty cheap and be much happier.

Brett_Murphy said:

In reply to Curtis :

This is great information! Thank you. I might have to apply a bit of google-fu to this- I've got a set of L31 heads in unknown condition, and the intakes I saw to use them on my '90 C1500 weren't cheap, so I was thinking that might be a dead end.




 

I used to have four of them laying around but I sold them.  I bought a bunch when I was building engines but kinda got out of the hobby.

I would start scouring ebay and boat junkyards.  There were a ton of "other" intakes used (not 063 ZZ4 intakes) on marine motors, but the last time I went to a boat junkyard I found a dozen or so ZZ4s and a dozen or so that were other brands.  Truth is, they'll all do perfectly well from idle to 5500, but the ZZ4 tends to stretch that to 5800 or so if you need it.

In reply to NGTD :

I know about Pertronix systems and have used them in the past. However a low use engine with properly lubricated points is not a problem. I come from a time when points were the only thing. I found that regular maintainance was all that was needed. I feel for this boat and the small amount of hours I use it a spring tune up will keep me running all summer without a problem.

Post title: Getting it running this year.   So I properly winterized the engine last year and parked next to the garage. Pulled it out and remembered the bearing buddy was missing off one side. Got it up in the air, pulled the wheel and bearings cleaned every thing up repacked bearings, put it back together with new bearing buddy modified to fit a 1977 trailer. Other side pull it a part and cleaning everything up nad find little round pieces 3/8" to 1/2" long in the seal(not the exact same as the first side) . Examine the seal and low and behold the pieces are the inner spring for the seal. Grab the calipers check sizes and go to the auto parts web site to try to find the odd seal. I found Oreilly's listed sizes for most of the seals. So I found a seal that matched (1955 Hudson was the newest car that used the seal) Had to have one ordered so it was the next day to install everything. I change the gear oil in the stern drive and figure she should start right up. Yeah not my luck. The next day I start looking in to it and find the carb wet with gas, not a lot but enough to suggest I am getting fuel. Dig out my home made spark checker and, you guessed it no spark. Check for voltage at the coil, and yes voltage on the positive side, and also the distributor side, Hmmm the points must be open. pull the cap and no the points are closed. Points must have corroded over the winter. I little sandpaper and a little playing around and I was getting spark when I manually opened the points. Try to start it, and just as I am thinking I need to get the booster out, she fires up. Let it run for 30 sec or so. (running a little rough) Get out the earmuffs hook up the garden hose and luckily she fires up and runs. Now that I don't have to worry about over heating I rev it up and set the throttle to 2000 rpm and let it warm up. After about 2 min it smooths out and the rpms jump to 3200. Luckily all the lights still work and after disassembling the horn cleaning it up a little and putting it back together the horn works. Now if only the weather would cooperate I could get it out this weekend. 

This isn't about Ford 400Ms? Gyp

zordak said:

Post title: Getting it running this year.   So I properly winterized the engine last year and parked next to the garage. Pulled it out and remembered the bearing buddy was missing off one side. Got it up in the air, pulled the wheel and bearings cleaned every thing up repacked bearings, put it back together with new bearing buddy modified to fit a 1977 trailer. Other side pull it a part and cleaning everything up nad find little round pieces 3/8" to 1/2" long in the seal(not the exact same as the first side) . Examine the seal and low and behold the pieces are the inner spring for the seal. Grab the calipers check sizes and go to the auto parts web site to try to find the odd seal. I found Oreilly's listed sizes for most of the seals. So I found a seal that matched (1955 Hudson was the newest car that used the seal) Had to have one ordered so it was the next day to install everything. I change the gear oil in the stern drive and figure she should start right up. Yeah not my luck. The next day I start looking in to it and find the carb wet with gas, not a lot but enough to suggest I am getting fuel. Dig out my home made spark checker and, you guessed it no spark. Check for voltage at the coil, and yes voltage on the positive side, and also the distributor side, Hmmm the points must be open. pull the cap and no the points are closed. Points must have corroded over the winter. I little sandpaper and a little playing around and I was getting spark when I manually opened the points. Try to start it, and just as I am thinking I need to get the booster out, she fires up. Let it run for 30 sec or so. (running a little rough) Get out the earmuffs hook up the garden hose and luckily she fires up and runs. Now that I don't have to worry about over heating I rev it up and set the throttle to 2000 rpm and let it warm up. After about 2 min it smooths out and the rpms jump to 3200. Luckily all the lights still work and after disassembling the horn cleaning it up a little and putting it back together the horn works. Now if only the weather would cooperate I could get it out this weekend. 

I'm sure you're fine, but in the future, always do the earmuffs first before touching the starter.  The water pump's impellers (in the lower unit) are reinforced rubber in an aluminum or brass housing.  As they sit and dry, the rubber sometimes sticks to the housing much like a valve cover gasket sticks to a head.  Spinning it when dry can rip off little chunks of the impeller and reduce the efficiency of the pump.

Like I said, I'm sure you're fine.  One of my former customers used to fire his up dry every year and he never seemed to have trouble, but I have also seen extreme situations where one of the impeller blades stuck so hard that it ripped the whole blade off when it spun.  My nephew just encountered this very thing.  He called me and asked why his 6hp outboard was so hard to pull.  Turns out, it ripped off one of the impeller fins and it wedged against the next one.

Congrats on getting it running.  It is an old-school car engine stuffed in a boat.  Nothing to be afraid of.

rubber impellers are a wear item. I personally would replace them yearly, but you can probably stretch that to two. It's not so much wear as it is the rubber taking a set or dryrotting that takes their toll. Fishing little bits of rubber impeller out of your cooling system is nobody's idea of a good time.

O.K. The wife and I cannot agree on what having a boat is for. All she wants to do is put around and sight see. What I want in a boat is like what I want in a car, something that at least feel fast and handles well. Since we cannot agree we decided to sell the boat. So I had the other really happy day in boat ownership I sold it. Maybe later I might see if someone has a little runabout but for now I will relax and spend more time in the vette.

In reply to zordak :

Since we cannot agree we decided to sell the boat

Joint decision is always best.

Sounds like my wife and I. Twenty five years of marriage, haven't had a fight.