I hope you got to test ride her today.

and I think you will be happy with her once she is completed. I took Audio and Pam and the folks out in my 280 Friday, I am constantly amazed at how well that boat works for a 28 footer.

Keep us posted, Kurt.

Well fella's
Seems we have a problem
One of my friends that knows nothing about boats put my risers on for me
well needless to say he never used a cookie pad to clean off the surfaces of the manifold and the riser before putting gaskets on and #5 cylinder sucked water while trying to get it fired up
I dont think I bent a rod or anything but when I pulled the oil out, what a mess
yoohoo all over again
nice, brand new engine that has never even been fired up before destroyed from something this dumb.
This is why I dont like anyone messin with my stuff but my friends are really trying to help me out and get this thing running.
I love the help but at this point, stick a fork in it, it is done I think?
Going to get new riser gaskets and take all the risers off and sand all the manifolds and risers down with a gasket remover pad.
Now Like I said this engine that got water in it has never fired up before, just the starter was turning it and it injested water into the exhaust manifold.
So im at a loss, I dont know what to do at this point?
Diesel fuel?
fill the whole damn thing or what?
Jason

Since it was just fresh water I would get the thing cleaned out and put new oil in there and get it fired off as quickly as possible. Are you sure that it was the exhaust manifold that leaked? If you never fired it and the engine did not stop abruptly then you should be ok. Take all the plugs out and turn it over a bunch before you put the plugs in in case there is water in the cylinders that would hydrolock them. Keep the faith man.

Jon

Jay, make sure that you use the new style riser gaskets (they are silver gray) when you put it back together. Are you running the stainless risers? and be careful with the 3M discs, if you are too agressive you will make the surfaces uneven. Merc stopped using the stainless risers because of the different expansion rates with cast iron/stainless. I hope your cam isn`t too big because you will have reversion problems with the stock exhaust.

Good luck, Kurt.

Hey Kurt,
whats up my friend?
Okay to prevent reversion what I have done is taken 2 1/2 pipe and expanded the end and slipped it into the riser outlet and that inner pipe runs to just about the transom inside the beginning of the exhaust tip.
so water and exhaust dont mix until it hits the tip behind the flappers.
so no reversion problem is going to occur.
Next yes the cams are big no question, not out of site huge but big none the less.
Yes Im running the stainless risers and the gaskets I did get were silver/gray and have the thin orange bead of gasket sealer on them.
Im going to order 4 more just because where I got these from , they have been sitting on the shelf for a long time and were dusty and ugly looking.
Im going to call Marc at BAM and get them overnighted to me here.
I dont think anything broke or bent inside since the engine was just using the starter motor to turn it over and it never fired up, it was a spontaneous leak since it had not happened before when I tried to fire this one up.
Ill have to keep trying on this to get it fired up, I dont think the bearings are shot or engine is trashed but im freaked out though.
I dont get why my luck with this thing is so bad either.
Jason

Round lobes on the cam?
 

"I only had it at 2000 rpm's after it ran for about 10 minutes at idle"

Jay,

I don't want to be alamist, but I have always been told to NOT let it idle until the cam has been broken in (by running it at 2000 RPM for 15-20 minutes). You want to idle it as little as possible at this point. Until the cam has broken in you want to make sure that the crank is slinging plenty of oil up onto the lobes of the camshaft. Otherwise, you risk rounding off the lobes of the cam. Of course, if you are running a roller then this does not apply.

Hope this isn't what is causing your backfire!

BTW - other engine is probably OK. Drain old oil, change filter, and fill with some cheapo stuff. Pull plugs, squirt oil & WD40 into each cylinder, and spin it over several times. Drain cheapo oil, replace filter again, and fire it up. Remaining moisture in the engine should burn off when it gets up to temp. You might still see a little milky sludge on your breather until you change the oil after the initial breakin. Believe me, I know all about the Yoo-Hoo. My engine builder neglected to use sealer on the head bolts (or one of his flunkees did).

Best of luck...

The back fire was from a fouled plug
That problem has now been resolved but im going to pull apart the exhaust risers and manifolds and clean all surfaces with a cookie pad on my die grinder and clean them off until they shine.
Then install new gaskets (the new graphite ones)
from there, fire that one back up and let it run for a little while about 1800 or so rpm's and do the break in cycle, change oil and that one is ready to go.
I decided to take last night off and spend it with the wife so boat was untouched yesterday.
Ill fog the cylinders tonight and get the drain plug out of the one engine and dump remaining oil into bilge and use some super kleen to get out the old oil and clean up the newly painted bilge.
then get that one going and primed from the oil pump.
then dump that oil and oil filter and start over again, empty out engine and install new plugs and see if she wont fire up or not.
have fouled out 2 sets of plugs on this engine and still wont fire but thank god I heard the water fill up and I shut the whole thing down and did not try after that to start it.
This is the ****tiest design from mercury how the water is SO close to the exhaust, if the damn thing was sleeved where the riser goes on the manifold wiht a square piece of tubing or something that would prevent an awful lot of this gasket blow outs!!!
Hell get me some headers!
Jason

riser pipe extensions?
 

Jason,do I have this right?you extended the exhaust section of the risers to near the tail pipes?are you running rubber hose to connect your risers to your tail pipes?if so,I suspect you are gonna need a rather large supply of hoses due to heat destruction of the hoses.that exhaust design requires cooling water to prevent the hoses from melting.
Just a thought.

it just needs a sprinkle! i've run dry exhaust on boats that still used a non dry tip.

anyway. dump the water in prior...using your set up the hp gains will be so nill.

I have 4 inch chrome pipes to connect the riser to the tip and the inner pipe is 2 1/2 inch expanded pipe.
Ill hvae to take a picture of it at some point so you all can understand what my hooptie does and how it works
Im going to get a kit together with all parts, supplies and what not and sell them at a reasonable price so that if you want to run big honkin cams, that the stock exhaust manifold riser setup you can adapt to a dry system to prevent reversion.
and your not forced to buy 5000 bones worth of headers to do it.
Jason