I did but at a cost.
I dropped a valve seat in one motor which did a good job at making alot of thing junk. So I pulled the other out and went thru it as any good boat owner should do and.....the second engine had a roller lifter that the roller was falling out of. It was not just loose it was all but in the oil pan. Just a revolution or two away from falling out. I have no idea what that would have done at 5500 rpm but im sure I would have had more junk on my hands.

-----Years ago I had a 1979 35 Mistress named "Outlaw Racer". Twin 540s and speedie "3s". Was good for around 65 when everything was right. We were out one day in Nantucket Sound watching a blowboat race. After things ended I fired up the engines which were dry-piped and loud and headed back into Osterville. I thought I noticed a slight miss in the engine that wasnt quite as powerful and throttled down and shut it off and cruised in on one. The next day I yanked both valve covers to check the valve springs and while messing around found that I could spin one spring on the intake side around by hand. Once I found that I knew I was out of my depth and called in a buddy who actually knew what he was doing. When he took the head off he found the most tulliped valve he had ever seen. He couldnt believe it didnt break off. I have the valve sitting on my desk today to remind me how lucky I was........Bill S

COOL BIG Daddy thought it looked familiar like the Waukegan il motors we talked about at Ricks in Key West that did'nt even make it off the start in the Miami poker run i'll send ya some IMRON 555U for that bilge

A friend decided to replace his stock GM roller lifers in his 540 only to find out one of the shafts was coming out of the roller. he was minutes away from failure.

I saved the broken crank...from a catastrophic failure...does that count

when i was cheap my first time around and re-used and oil cooler..... the boat ran well, ran it for a season. winterized it and i was going to replace the pushrods because i skimped on them and i bent one during the season. i wanted the intake off because i am a freak about finding zero lash. well you should have seen...

But, good thing i was looking at her. i saved the crank. At that point i really didnt care because i was going to do everything the right way not the cheep way. which, my cheap way is a little better than some things i have seen across this site. one season down 45 hours on engine. not a lick of problems. thanks Eddie and Bob!

I cant say I saved it from failure, but I did save it from catastrophic failure I guess....meaning that I was able to reuse most of the parts...

OUCH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!

[QUOTE=endeavor1;3328012]I once had a premonition that a friend of mine was about to go for a wild ride while jumping waves from a large SeaRay.....
QUOTE]

VV-

Was that a little over compensation because that Searay had a bigger roostertail than you did?

How about having an engine that you wanted to grenade and couldn't? Years ago the wife had to have this new twin turbo Mazda RX-7 piece of chit. Was kind of a neat car for 1995 but had a lot of engine issues the dealer couldn't get right. They wouldn't take the piece of chit back so I decided I'll blow it up. Funny thing was they couldn't get it to run right but that rotary would not blow up, I even drained all the oil out and then took it for a dukes of hazzard style drive. Smoked like a mosquito fogger after that but still freaking ran.

RB