Last season when i was out, boat was running great. Parked for awhile to swim, started her back up and everytime i moved the sticks the port motor kept dying. WTF??? Got home pulled carb apart, and the rubber dougnut on the accel pump was laying in the bottom of the well. Kinda hard to get that big shot o gas like that. Freaking corn liquor is not good... For boats at least

Sounds like it could be fuel, but I'd always do the wires and any fuel filters before tearing the carb down. Make sure to dump out the fuel into a glass jar to check for crap and separation too. If that doesn't find your trouble go get Cliff Ruggles book on the Quadrajet. It's got everything you can need to know. Plus he hosts a q&a web site. It's cliffshighperformance.com. Or spend the money to get a replacement carb now and rebuild the original one at your convenience, you will need it sometime. It's more money out, but boat season is here!

Found the Miss! I started pulling plugs. 2 plugs on each side were closed. I then looked inside the cylinders. It seems that a split washer fell down the carb and hit all 4 cylinders fed by the drivers side plenum. Really sucks as I have never had the spark arrestor off. So now here I am $7500 in a 79 Formula F18 and now it needs a motor. I tore down the motor. One cracked cylinder, bad heads, and 4 broken pistons. It is all at the machine shop getting prepped to be a 355. I have also purchased a new set of 906 vortec heads. The motor will now be .030 over, speed pro pistons, moly rings, stock crank, stock rods, xtreme marine 262 cam, vortec heads, Air gap intake, Edelbrock 1409 carb. Think my little boat will hit 65 or so?

Btw my machinist is sleeving the block for $90, then another $220 for boring all 8 cylinders.

If I were you I'd find a diff block. I've had bad luck with sleeved blocks in a boat, although I do hear of others that work out fine. Also I would start with a fuel tank of 100% fresh fuel before running the new engine. Your description up till the split washer thing sounded like detonation due to last falls fuel took out a few pistons.

by the sound of your damage,it was caused by detonation,id check the fuel system before the new engine goes in the boat,you don,t want a repeat after spending all that money rebuilding your engine.

I would have to say its a washer because there were several pieces embedded in the pistons. The pieces were all hardened steel. There is no missing pieces of ring missing or any other engine components for that matter. Its really odd.

Is there any way I can test the fuel? I dont know what to do with 38 gallons. Its full to the brim. I am not worried about the $150 to refill the tank.

Its probably a valve seat or piece of ring you see in the piston.

FYI I burned the rankest oldest gas out of a boat I bought a few years ago (over 200 gallons) in my daily drivers with no issues. I added about 5 gallons of bad gas at each fillup and put in 93 octane of fresh where I would normally run 87oct.

None of the rings were missing any pieces. The valves were not missing any pieces either. I will take apart the heads and look at the valve seats. I think I will burn the gas in my girlfriends Taurus.