It's ALIVE!
 

Well, after quite a bit of "jury rigging" we got the engine to fire! The only glitch that we encountered was a defective starter slave solinoid. Once that was bypassed the engine jumped to life! The thing has a line loppy idle and really sounds healthy! With some luck we can have the motor hung tomorrow and maybe have it one the water in a couple of weeks! WhooHoo!

NICE dude. Did you fire it out of the boat? Or is it kind of in the boat but not sitting on the engine mounts?? ROCK ON!!!

Jon

Fired it on the pallet on the forklift. Started to really move around at 4k! Tomorrow she goes in.

Way to go man I will be rooting for you!!!!! :D:D:D

Cord, great news. Maybe we'll see you on the water yet this year.

congrats:cool:

OK, after much trial and tribulation, I GOT THE FREEKN" MOTOR IN!

I had the entire transom assembly, extension box, external steering and drive installed. When we tried to put a jig that locates the motor mounts, the pins wouldn't drop into the rear motor mount holes. They were 1/4" too close together! Luckly for Stellings it was a sunday or I'd be reading them the riot act! :mad: So I disconnected everything and pulled the extension box/gimble off. After tearing everything apart, I wanted to double check to see if the mount angles were going to be long enough. I set the transom plate back in the boat and tried to hold the jig up to it. Low and behold, it fit! Everybody just stood there staring because just a half an hour ago the holes were too close together! Yes, the distance between the mounting holes actually changed! Well after some head scratching I put a straight edge on the transom plate. It was perfectly flat. I then put the straight edge on the transom only to see a 1/16" gap at the edge of the cut. Yep, the transom wasn't flat causing the the plate to warp thus moving the holes closer together! After some more head scratching, we decided to shim the plate and hope for the best. We dropped the motor in and the two rear bolts slid right in. Absolutly perfect! Once I cross the exhaust hurdle, this thing should be wet in just a week or two!

NICE!!!!! Love hearing you got that thing in there. I know you struggled with it for a while. You must be pumped!!! What is up with the exhaust? do you have allignment issues? Why so long to hook that up?

Jon

I took some pics last night, hopefully I'll get them up tomorrow. With CMI elbow tops, the top of the header is about 3" ABOVE the top of the boat! The exhaust tip, although high, would result in a tight tailpipe bend that would have to pass through the lip at the back header. This piece is pretty light as it is and I'd hate to take a 3" deep cut out of it. I'm proably going to end up with some totally custom lightning headers.

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