This is interesting. Ray insists that everything is exactly the same as a 496 HO except for raising the rev limiter. You can even look up his kit's on the web site and he will tell you if you have a 496 HO you do not need to change the ECM unless you want to take it from 5100 to 5400 RPM rev limiter.

Anyway, when the motor lost a piston it was on Ray's ECM reprogram and had been for a couple hours.

Regarding the 103 kit which i started out with, you are correct. The 103 kit does NOT require or push you in the direction of an ecm flash if you started out with the "HO".

If your "loaner" ecm was running rich when the damage happened that was not the problem. Rich doesn't kill things.

Lean does. Rich also cools the combustion temp a little especially the tops of the pistons... Fuel is a bit of a coolant before it ignites. The more you have the cooler things tend to be up to a point.

The loaner ecm did not break your piston.

You never said where your work was done and who did it. That kit is not something for the novice imo. However, I'm not calling you a novice either.

If you had two engines with issues, which one did you put together? How far apart were they?

wow...don't mess with a 496 I guess.

Well this post is certainly interesting and since I have been off the site over a week and involved with a serious family medical issue for just over the last few weeks. It seems that the whole story here needs to be spelled out clearly and concisely.

First, Brad I think your posting of this item is mean spirited and uncalled for based on how Raylar has treated you as a customer up to this point. If you where a regular OSO contributor and had an issue you would like to come on the forum and discuss that would be one thing , but to come on this forum and blast Raylar without getting all the facts and information clearly stated is a cheap shot!

Lets start from the beginning:
1. Brad called over a year ago June 2009 and ordered one of our 103 engine upgrade kits for his stock 110 hour 496 engine. Raylar sold the kit to Brad and he had it installed by a shop in Iowa
2. 5 or so hours after his installation and subsequent use of his boat a cast piston in his Raylar kit equipped 496 engine broke and a connecting rod punched thru the bore as they sometimes do in 496's at rpms under load.
Was the Raylar kit responsible for the piston letting go?
No, not in my opinion as many stock pistons have failed in stock 496's over the last 5-7 years in most cases this has happened to absolutely stock unmodified 496 engines and many with supercharging on stock 496 engines.
Raylar and many 496 owners have seen this happen on brand new 496's with less than three hours use and its happened on stock 496's with hundreds of hours of use. There is no correlation between the time of these piston failures and the hours on the engine or whether the engine has a Raylar upgrade kit or not. When you consider that there are over 40,000 496 Merc engines alone out there operating, the 50-100 of those that have expierenced piston failure at any hours represents a very small percentage of failure.

When you consider that there are over 700 496's out there running Raylar 103 engine kits since 2003 and I know of only three or four of these engines that ever expierenced simple piston only failure while running a Raylar kit I think it is obvious to draw the conclusion that Raylar kits on 496's do not cause piston failure.

What did Raylar do when Brad's engine failed. We simply felt bad for him and his situation and we offered to him that we would supply a complete new block with all forged internals, equipped with reworked Raylar heads, completely reassemble and ship his engine back to him, ready to drop in and run at our cost on the parts and a discounted labor rate which supplied him a complete new blueprinted Raylar equipped 496 at about $4,000 less than our regular complete 496 Raylar blueprinted engine!

What happened then was Brad used this engine for a summer trouble free and then put his boat in cold winter storage until this summer when he took it out earlier this year and expierenced a knocking noise in the engine,

Brad took the boat to a shop in Iowa who stated that they thought he had a broken piston or rod knock in the engine and the engine would most likely have to come out and have a complete redo. Brad called me at this point and when he discribed the condition and the noise I told Brad I doubted it was a serious internal issue as I know how we build these engines and test them before shipping and I was very sure it was something less serious going on with the engine.
I told Brad I thought he should get the boat to a more qualiified engine mechanic, whcih he did and this shop found very quickly that one of the rocker arm nuts had apparently come loose and the rocker arm came off and in the process bent the pushrod and put a knick in the rocker arm body. Brad called with this mechanic about three or four days before 4th of July weekend and asked for us to send a replacement rocker arm, locking nut and pushrod.
Rayalr had to overnight ship these replacement parts at our full expense. Raylar happened to be out of single new roller rockers at this point so knowing the 4th of July weekend was only a few days away Raylar sent a used rocker and pushrod from one of our test engines to make sure Brad's boat could splash for the 4th of July.
The mechanic working on the engine when he received the parts realized the rocker was used felt the rocker was rough and unusable in his opinion and Brad called to say the mechanic and He wanted a new rocker and pushrod immediatly. I drove to our supplier, picked up a new roller rocker, put it and a new pushrod in a box and shipped it overnight rush again to Iowa. At this point the new rocker arm and pushrod was installed and I was told the engine was and still is operating perfecdtly.
If this is bad customer support and service I certainly don't what great customer service is!
Did a rocker nut back off in Brads engine back off? Yes it obviously did. Did Raylar deny responsibility? No, we stepped right up and sent the replacement parts quickly at our full expense, no questions asked.
Does Raylar make mistakes? Yes we can, we are human like everybody else and we don't claim to be perfect. What we do when things like this happen is we take quick and immediate action to help resolve the problem, as we did in this case.
Brad should also realize that it was my questioning of the initial diagnosis that saved and expensive and time consuming takeout and teardown of his engine that had no real serious internal issues.
Why is Brad upset and badmouthing Raylar now? I am not sure but I suspect it has to do with my not being able to quickly respond to his demand for a labor reimbursement that I just came back to my office to find. Do I have problem paying for a simple repair on a Raylar built engine that Raylar may have been responsible for, no , I just don't like it when a customer unannouced mails me a bill I did not pre-authorize or have any estimate for, especially now that I get a bill for nearly $700 for 6.5 hours of labor to replace a single rocker arm and pushrod. I do know what it takes to do this type of replacement on a 496 and believe me when I say 6.5 hours is a bit excessive.
I also do not think it is right for a customer such as Brad comes onto this forum and makes a claim that he has had nothing but problems with Raylar when that is not the real case.
The hundreds of Raylar customers out there know the kind of company and reputation for customer before and after sale service that Raylar is respected for and has provided over the years to all.
Brad you should rethink your comments and hopefully realize that Raylar has always treated you right and has gone to great lengths and expense to make sure your previous engine and your current engine where taken care of properly by Raylar. Your comments here state misleadingly that Raylar has not given you good product or customer service for that product.
I respectfully and seriously disagree! Perhaps you should have dealt with someone else on your 496 and its initial misfortunes, I believe your current position would be far worse off that you now paint in your comments about Raylar.

There, you now have Raylars side of this story and I think our actions and reputation speak for themselves. Can I always make everone happy in every situation? No, but Raylar and I surely deserve better treatment than this blast on this forum.

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Well put Ray.:kiss:

i have to admit that once I read this entire thing I found it odd that Brad did not actually say that things were working well now. I got that feeling but he did nto actually say that. He has certainly had some issues but I would be very happy if Raylar had done all the things they have. Does it suck that Brad probably did not budget for all this work, sure it does but that is what you get when you step up to big boy toys. As soon as you modify an engine, all bets are off. Raylar did everything they could possibly do short of getting on a plane and doing the work himself. IMO I would have pulled the other valve cover just to make sure if I had found issues with the nuts loosening. I thought that the valve cover gaskets were reusable on those things?

Bottom Line is it s***ks this whole mess occured, stressing any motor beyond its intended range however how small of a range is dancing with the devil! hint hint ( rotating assembly) hey pull up your boot straps, lesson learned? ..........................Robertjr................ ......................

Ray sorry to hear about the medical emergency, after reading both sides I think that both have been patient with each other. I can see both sides and I'm not finding fault on either, I hope you both can come to a reasonable an healthy conclusion. I still respect Raylar and the improvements they have helped with for the industry and look for more to come, we all know R&D aint cheap.

I think the heart of the matter is the perceived level of ‘reliability’ when using the BCK-103 kit. Raylar’s home page states ‘…raise the level of performance, reliability, …’. It states on the kit page ‘…many hours and years of extremely reliable service…’

I believe Brad did his due diligence in researching for information on the BCK-103 kit and based on the independent information and claims from Raylar felt it was a safe upgrade. I for one have never heard of stock 496 engines losing pistons. Raylar claims this just happens and in no way adding the BCK-103 kit which increases the HP and top rpm could have caused the catastrophic failure to Brad’s engine. Besides just common sense, this just does not add up even using the numbers provided by Raylar. 50-100 failures on the 40,000 stock engines is .12-.25%. But 3-4 stock piston failures on the 700 Raylar modified engines is .43-.57%.

I believe this whole situation would have gone differently and it simply makes sense to clearly state you are raising the risk of failure when increasing the power and rpm of the 496 when running the stock pistons. Customers would likely step-up to the forged piston kits or engine packages. If they decide not to and have a piston failure, at least it would not be such a surprise.

The 496 is a great engine but they do fail new and with hours I have seen a few go bad. I think Ray has stepped up to the plate for the customer and tried his best to make the customer happy.

Ray,

Sorry to hear about your medical issues.

I did my best to keep my post from becoming mean spirited. I tried to keep it to the facts, and believe I did. In hidsite I could have picked a different title for the post. Maybe "Raylar- My Experience." or something along those lines. As far as the content, I stuck to the facts and did my best to leave emotions out of it.

There are a few things you are a little off on in your post. Nobody ever thought my second motor lost a piston or rod. I did call you to see if you had any ideas and you were very helpful in putting them on the right track. The boat shop was not going to tear into the motor and were very upfront about that to you and me. They did say they would take the motor out if I wanted, but that's it. They also thought it was a top end problem and the motor might not have to come out, so I would need to find someone elso to work on it.

No one from Raylar ever told me they were sending used parts to get my boat going for the 4th of July weekend. I didn't find this out until my mechanic opened the box. He was fine with the used gasket, but the push rod was the wrong one and the bearing in the rocker was "rough" You talked to my mechanic at this point and said you would send a new one right out. One week later I had to call you and see where the new one was, so maybe at this point you drove to the supplier and overnighted the new one.

I haven't talked to you since, so I don't know who told you the boat was operating perfectly?

Here is every weekend I used the boat with the Raylar Motors.

1. First weekend. Had borrowed ECM and break in period but no problems.

2. Second weekend. Blew up motor.

3. New motor first weekend. Took it easy to break in but no problems.

4. Seperate weeknight to test fuel pressure in new motor and take up to speed to make sure no problems. No issues in 30 minutes of boating.

5. 1st weekend this year rocker nut comes loose but we don't know that is problem yet.

6. 2nd weekend have same problem but figure it out after this.


That is it. There was no other boating in my boat and this covers a full year.

On the warranty issue I didn't just send you a bill. I called you a couple of times, emailed you, then faxed you the bill. You can also see the bill is made out to me not you. It is for $544 plus tax for a total of 582.08. I don't want anything from you, so why don't you take whatever you think you should owe and donate it to you favorite charity. It was never about the money it was about the lack of response which I can understand if you were having problems.

My whole purpose in making these posts is to try and educate anyone making a decision on modifying their boat. I will say that if they are going with a raylar kit that Ray is going to be there to answer any question you have and help the whole way. The kit is going to add the power he says, look great, and sound awesome. Here is where we split opinions.

You say the motor will last as long or longer with your kit on it, I disagree. I think anyone doing the kit on their motor deserves to know that there is a possibility that when you add that much power and crank up the RPM's any flaw in your motor (pistons) may be exposed. If such a flaw is exposed there is no warranty. I believe that if I had not done the first kit my motor would have made it much longer, and I would not have lost so much boating time. From all of the posts I've received about don't mess with the 496 I think there are quite a few that agree.

"I was running full out for about 30 seconds when the motor nuked. It was the first time that the motor had ever been above 5000 RPM's and I was at @ 5300 when it let go." - hawks407

Ray, to say the increased RPM (and HP) of the 103 kit cannot be linked to the piston failure is a bit of a stretch. It may or may not have played a factor in the engine's demise. It is a bit of a coincidence the motor runs trouble free for 110 hours and the first time it is taken beyond its intended operating RPM range it breaks a piston. It is common knowledge that turning too many RPM with a cast or hypereutic piston can cause them to break. Do you have pics of the broken piston? Did it pull the wrist pin out of the piston? Did the piston show signs of detonation?

That sucks that you have had problems but I see this happen all the time to people. Someone who might not have a very good understanding of the risks of modding engines has something go wrong and the shops always don't help since they might not always fully explain the risks of what they are doing to there motors.

I hope everyone ends up happy with this deal in the end since it is never good to leave a customer with a bad task in his mouth but it is also just as bad to unjustly hurt the reputation of a persons company.

Face it, is performance boating. things go wrong, things break. Doesn't matter if its mercury or bubba's back yard boat motors, chit happens. When your sitting on the dock because chit happens, the chit really stinks.

Modfying anything can breed headaches, modifying a motor with baseline piston issues just exacerbates things while at the same time I am willing to bet Ray took much better careof you than merc would have.

The only way to never have problems is to buy a 30' new wave crusher hull, and put box stock 350's in it hooked to 6's and adjust the trottle so it only opens half way, even that is not garaunteed and its not much fun either

100% right on the money!! The only way to not have problems is DON'T BUY A BOAT.

And yes, it would have been worse with Merc. Ask how many guys suffered water intrusion do the the "stock" headers on the 525 he was considering. Then ask how many guys got any help at ALL from Merc.

Hard to beleive Merc would put cast internals in anything making over 400HP.

It's also hard to believe they won't put better valve springs in something making over 525 but they don't.

If they can't gete rich on every single part they won't mess...

I ran cast in an old engine making 525 and beat the absolute, living, dog snot out of it.

Looking back, I acted a fool but learned how to drive pretty decent....

:party-smiley-004:

Few things you might be missing.

1. By and large, the majority of boat owners never get on this site and post issues or complaints. All of us on here are a minority in the sport. I realize how many members there are but I don't think most on this forum realize how many owners do NOT partake. It's pretty easy to loose sight of this or never give it a thought. That alone will heavily skew the numbers.

2. If you spend time around some shops (most have no time or interest), it may surprise you at what you would see. No offense but there is no way it could "add up" to you if you don't spend a lot of time around it looking, poking and being nosey.

3. You may be shocked at a lot of the dense, inexperienced mechanics out there. First thing a guy does after he buys a kit is try to find someone who will install it at a "perceived" discount. Or he hunts down a shop that says "yeah, we'll have it going by the long weekend for you". The scenarios are literally endless. If you have a nice boat, nice stuff to install but have an "average" guy, you're in trouble.

I was at a local Mercury Dealer here in SD the other day grabbing some parts. Lots of nice, low hour stuff torn to chit.

Some within the warranty barely. Lots just outside the warranty. It happens.

Well said. Do you mind if I use this explanation at my marina for engine failures? I've never heard it explained that way. I like it!!

That being said.............I would still mess things up!! Back on topic.

moral of this story .... leave the 496 alone............

why dick around and cause heartache over a few ponies...if you don't mind the risk..swallow it and move on. I feel sorry for this guy..I have heard about others..but such is life when you own a boat.

Too bad we have no way of predicting, that engine could have been doomed the day it left the factory.

If over 700 Raylar kits have been sold already for the 496, Im guessing they would be out of business by now if this was a common problem. I read the whole thread, I think it really sucks that it happened, but I cant see blaming Raylar for all the problems.

I think that is jumping to a conclusion based on very little statistical data.

I do understand the pain the owner has been going through, but hopefully the second engine will work well from now on.

I would however get the other side torqued to specs too, to be on the safe side in that respect.

+1 Whats wrong with stock? Ya I would like more ponies every now and then. But I dont want the headache.

This thread reminds me of the problems some freinds were having about chipping their diesels. But thats another topic and I dont want to open up a can of worms. :evilb:

I completely understand that chit happens. I am mechanically inclined and spent my younger days building bb chevys running on alcohol for 1/4 mile drags. Spent a lot of time at the machine shop that sponsored my car. My point is there are a lot of people out there that are clueless (not necessarily saying your are Brad :kiss:) when it comes to engines and when they read on a website these engine 'kits' will 'raise the level of reliability', they may actually believe it. How can a BCK-103 kit increase reliability when using stock pistons? Now upgrading to the forged piston kit may be another story. I just think if this was pointed out in the first place things may have turned out differently. My 2 cents.

BTW, I think Ray really did what he could once things went to chit and I am really sorry to hear about the family medical issues.

[QUOTE=capt2130;3176325]+1 Whats wrong with stock?


Now what fun would that be ?:lolhit::party-smiley-004:

[QUOTE=RunninHotRacing158;3176371]exactly...but sometimes ya just want to go and not really worry boat nuken a motor or drive...I say buy two... one turn key and one that ya just do whatever with to haul azz in!!:coolcowboy:

I'm glad that I listened to everyone telling me not to bother with the 496, so I bought a low hour '07 vintage 525 EFI from an OSO member for $20,000 and sold the 496 for $8,000. I shipped it to Germany! IMO the 496 is a white elephant and I don't see much use for it. Nothing personal Ray, JMO.

It's a great engine for what it is. I had one for three years and it gave me nothing but reliable boating pleasure with reasonable performance. It's not a racing engine and wasn't designed to be upgraded, that's why there are purpose built bigger hp engines. I wanted to go faster but couldn't see tinkering with the 496 so I just sold the boat and bought something else. My attitude was that I wanted to GO BOATING, not F around with engine issues and miss what few months we have in the northeast dicking around with engine repairs/mods.

True that. The 525 gave me a solid 10 mph increase and tons more acceleration. I also feel that it is up to the task of running hard for extended periods. Are folks picking up 10 mph with the Raylar kit?

edit: I don't want to turn this into a 496 or Raylar bashing thread. Some folks want to work with the 496 and Raylar has certainly done the research on how to get more out of them other than just bolting on a SC. I'm just tossing in my 2 cents. (which is probably only worth one cent!) :)

I picked up 9 mph but I am still tweeking.....well not lately...only boating.
The Raylar pkg was everything Ray said it would be....lots of torque and power, and sounds awesome as hell.

I have ran the crap out of my Raylar 525 and it has never missed a beat.

The piston issue if there is one scares me though.....

Make sure you always run good gas and there is no reason for worry.

And to be clear, one month old ethanol gas can be questionable.

Reliability is a broad term. In relation to the valve train (valves and valve springs) you have to admit Raylars stuff is far more robust. In relation to the pistons, Raylars heads have a radically different combustion chamber design which may relate to less failures. But, in my situation, once you have piston rattle, its all over.... its only a matter of time after i heard the rattle till they implode. cast is cast...

Raylar furnished an ECM with a raised rev-limiter, knowing full well they can let loose at 5300+ ??

I would have thought the same thing blue thunder. I have seen a high performance engine go bad because of bad fuel. Piston # 6 is the first to go. Not once but twice. Give me a 525 anyday of the wekk. They will run for ever with the right maintenance.

[QUOTE=LAriverratt;3176637]:lolhit::drink:

Yup Yup
http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...cs191Small.jpg
http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...ng202Small.jpg

A 496 will run forever with the correct maintance as well.

And that is why GM went back to the 502?