Raylar 496 Upgrade Kits
 

I'm thinking about upgrading my stock 496 Mag motors with the Raylar 103 or 106 kits. As anyone ever had any experience with these good or bad? What kind of performance results did you get?

I am running the 103 kit and it is a nice package.

If you have the mag the 103 kit willl be a huge power increase for you.

My 28' single step Powerquest Silencer went from a 65 mph boat to a 73-74 mph boat, all gps speeds.

There is still speed to be had with prop work, just havent gotten there yet.

Installed CMI Etops this past summer but did not have a chance to finish the set up as I had cracked 2 pistons- serious overheat the first day with my new boat due to lack of knowledge on my part.

The kit is everything Raylar claims.

I installed the 106 kit on a 496 Mag HO and also upgraded the pistons and connecting rods. I was an early adopter (2005 install) and worked through a number of ECM calibrations which today are a non-issue. 29' Velocity improved from 69.4 mph to 81.6 (GPS). The motor has six seasons of running strong and I look forward to many more.

verbi69,

Can you elaborate on the lack of knowledge. I am interested in the kits but have been concerned about the reliability.

Thanks.

When I bought the boat it was late winter, the boat came from Wisconsin so it had been winterized.
This boat is my first with a closed cooling system and I had no idea at the time that the little blue butterflies needed to be opened to drain the cooling system..... before the motor is started....as I didn't know any better I had not done this and overheated the engine....lots of white smoke.
Needless to say that was probably one of the worst things that I could have done to shorten the life of the engine.
This year I had lost compression and did a complete rebuilt with forged internals...good too go now!
Ray's kit did not harm my engine, it was my lack of knowledge of the closed cooling system.

Reliabilty is not an issue....get a professional to do the work if in doubt.

On the Raylar 106 Kit did you do the work yourself or have a professional install? How much did installation run you? I have a "07 Formula 370SS with 2 496 motors so I have double the costs on everything. Thanks.

Been pricing it around myself and all the shops seem to be in the $4K range to do engine work which includes new forged pistons (not from Raylar). This is the engine work only and not the R&R.

Could you specify as to why the engine gets over heated by not draining the cooling system ?
Did the formal owner let the water pump suck antifreeze in ?
or did he drain the water out of the coolers with the blue butterflies ? I don,t understand how this could happen ?
The only thing I could think of is that someone installed a shut off valve between the water pump and the outdrive ,and forget to open the valve when starting her up first time .
This would cause major overheating .

Your description of what you did wrong makes no sense to me. By "little blue butterflies" are you referencing the blue plastic drain plugs? Those would need to be installed if they were removed during winterization. Or are you referring to the little green nipples near the Schrader valve where you pressurize the drain system? If those were popped out, indicating the system was still pressurized (I've never seen one hold pressure for very long) then you would have needed to pull up on the ring to release the pressure. Otherwise the water coming in would run out the drains.