Why does it seem so many crooks prey on the High-performance boaters
 

I've been actively following this forum on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks, as I am new to go-fast boating, and it seems there is alot of widespread discontent with well-known go-fast boat service providers. It seems predominately to do with engine builders. As a car hot-rodder, I'm a little surprised at the hands-off mentality of alot of high-performance boaters, but there still seems to be alot of people that have been ripped-off and taken advantage of. There seems to be pretty drastic situations where 10's of thousands of dollars worth of engine work was paid for and either subpar service was recieved, or either the engine builder ran off with everyone's money and subsequently filed Bankruptcy, etc.

I recall a few threads where there was mention of not taking your boat engine to some "redneck muscle car machine shop" but it seems to me that alot of the hot rod boat shops are full of crooks. As someone who has a background in hot rods and muscle cars, I can say I've never experienced such criminal service as has been described over and over here. Sure, the machine work might have taken a week or two longer than promised, but I have never had the expereince where used parts were substituted for paid-for new parts. That's just plain fraud and dishonesty. Maybe it's due to the fact that the hot rod/muscle car community is larger than the hot boat community and word travels faster.

While a followup from another member responding to my post spoke of the redneck engine builders, my post did indeed advise the guy to take his heads to a marine guy rather than the local speed shop.

This had nothing to do with the "redneck-ness" or unreliability of car speed shops, but more to do with the different requirements of a performance marine application versus a drag car application.

Marine motors spend FAR MORE time at high output levels than drag motors. While a drag head guy may wield a "mean" die grinder and get awesome flow numbers off his flow bench, his heads need only to produce max output for 10 seconds at a time.

Obscure things such as valve seat width, oil flow around the valvesprings, thickness of the edge fillet on the exhaust valve, mating surface of the rocker stud to the spotface on the head casting - these are all "little things" that a hometown drag builder may not pay any attention to. Those things won't make a drag motor go any faster or last for more passes (in fact, the desired valve seat width for a blown marine motor is far thicker than you'd want for best flow on a set of drag heads.

Marine motors are BASED on car motors. Good hi performance marine motors, though, need to have several areas addressed for best service in their environment that differ from cars. And most of it has to do with cooling, lubrication, mechanical fatigue, and thermal growth...

Sorry if anybody took offense.

again. graphics,or spare motor pkge?

cya lucy.

See Lucy...
I didn't expect to see this in this thread.. I'll take a spare of what is in the engine compartment :D

Because we drink too much. :D

Why does it seem so many crooks prey on the High-performance boaters?

Follow the money.

Monty, being local to you i can tell you first hand like it was mentioned that hot-rod engine builders dont always know what they are doing with marine engines.....i took a pair of bigblocks to a guy here localy. The place was recomended to me by a good friend who works at Strange Engineering. These guy do machine and assembly work for a few guy at the shop there. Anyway they built me a set of long blocks and i put the intake, exh, and the acc on. First engine last all but an hour......took out every main bearing!.....second engine threw a rod out the pan at 3500rpm on a slow cruise going to the air/water show! I took the engines back to them right as it happened. His first reply was i has the remote oil system plumbed backwards! Well considering i had pitures and a Merc manual on hand to show him he still insisted it was wrong.....so to make myself feel better i took off the second system just in case. When the second engine threw a rod i took it back and showed him the damage and the TOTALLY intact, brand new looking connecting rod and bolt i found in the pan and his responce was that the damage was allready done from the begining with the oil system being backwards!!! .....there was no damage ANYWHERE else in the engine other then the rod issue!!! :mad:
nnedless to say i have not doen businees with them anymore and have told a few people not to go there if they are doing marine work. I wont slam them on the board cause i guess they do great hot-rod work so i'm not gonna ruin someone livelyhood because they cant do one are right.......ust burns me that they wouldnt stand behind their work......and he said he would have covered it if i had the engines dynoed......well that fine and dandy but if i'm allready on a tight budget why would i waste $500 for maybe an hours worth of work just to dial in an engine when i know how to do all that myself? :mad: :mad:

Oh and Monty, great website! Just scanning over a little and i see you had work doen by FastTimes.....thats where i have all my work done now too....They are a little slow sometimes but i have not had one issue with them out of the 5 engines they have done for me yet! :D

Wally,

I just sent you a PM. Jeff and Mark at Fast Times are awesome, and I know they have done machine work for hi-performance boaters, so I was going to recommend them if you didn't already know them, but you already do. I believe Chuck holds the current ET and MPH record in NMRA Ford Mustang racing at 6.5*** @220+mph on a 10.5" tire, turbo motor by Fast Times.

After the success I've had with my 1200hp/1000ft lbs 93 octane Twin Turbo small block, I'm tempted to build a turbo system for my big blocks in the boat.

When you take your car to the dealership for service - they usually fix it quick and for a fair price , right? So now we have these high performance boats and we're prepared to spend more money , we assume that these con guy's will do the same as our local car dealership just cost more! YEA RIGHT! For example take your local Honda , Ford , Chevrolet dealer - they have like 10 acres and they've been in business for a decade! The boat guy's shop is usually a rented hole in the wall. They sit there and wait for us to come along and WHAMMO! I know a guy on Lake Lanier that has ripped off probally 100 people and is still in business ! This is crazy! BH