As Tank said above, "good from far but far from good".
This one was last heard of a couple of years ago in Phuket. It was doing some day charter work and vaguely for sale. Not a 38', I think they called it a 36'....? (Poor photos, sorry)

I remember that was for sale a year or two ago.

the one I’m talking about looked EXACTLY like a top gun. Until you started really looking at it and all the funky stuff started standing out.

Must be fun @60 mph in 3 ft waves

Thanks rak rua, the HIN says it all...

Checked the engine room out and here is what I found. Both engines are Shafiroff 582 with compression lowered to 9.5, Holley Dominator 4500, Edelbrock aluminium heads, Stainlesse Marine headers, Crane roller cams, MSD Ignition, some Harding parts and Russell and Earl´s plumbing. Nice. Some differences between the two engines though.

Bad news is starboard engine is seized. Found traces of salt(water) in both headers which pi$$ed me of as it´s so unnecessary. Now I have to rebuild a fine low hour engine only because somebody made a mistake and flooded the engine. Pretty sure I know when that happened.
Then again, considering the incredibly messed up und dirty engine room it´s problably best if I pull both engines, fix everything and paint the bilge white. The strainers are probably 33 years old, bilge pumps don´t work and there is only one blower. Leaking hydraulics, no fire extinguisher, messy cabling, dangling hoses and so on.

Before pulling it I want to start port engine, need to hear some music. Will change oil and filter, coil, spark plugs, cleaned and refurbished one carb already, lots of grime and dirt inside.Same with fuel pump.

Did I mention that I got a cero hour Shafiroff 582 short block as a spare with the boat? It´s still on that tiny island though, have to find a way to bring it.



Port Dominator (removed) is marine type, the other side not, both 1050 cfm.

Gasket hard as stone

Only starboard engine has these

Fuel pump before cleaning

At least you have the skill to do all this. That's what it's gonna take being way out there. Looking forward to the progress.

Engine looks clean inside, hopefully you can get it unstuck

Interesting, good detective work. Reiterating being able to turn a wrench is your saving grace.. Just my $.02, I’d pull both motors and at least psi test the exhaust of the free motor before trying to light it off; unless your going to unhook the water pumps and run it w/out h20 for a quick bit.. Good luck. Watching your progress!
ps, hell of a score on the short blocks!

Nice if they are shafiroff. I’d be leery of the cam in them though, they usually do aggressive drag race stuff. Also surprised it has edelbrock heads. They don’t make very high performing heads. The car guys prefer brodix and others.

Also, that exhaust is likely holding them back. Some also think 582s aren’t good for endurance vs a 565, but that’s hotly debated. Small block Chevy guys are commonly running worse rod/stroke ratios.

I talked to the original former owner once. Nice old fella, but his memory fading, he couldn´t answer all my questions. He bought the engine blocks from Shafiroff and assembled them himself, had the piston domes machined to lower compression and chose a mild cam.
Not sure why anybody would choose a drag engine for a boat, but hey, still happy to have some beefy irons under the hood. They should be 6-7 years old and under 50 hours.
Need some more detective work to identify the Edelbrocks (they have rectangular ports) and the cams. Unfortunately I don´t have any specs on them and either on the ignition timing.

No dyno in this country. I wonder how many hp, any wild guesses?