Any LS or LT1 boats on here ?
 

I know mastercraft made some LT1 boats with an Indmar motor but any forum member or friends ever rigged up a LT1 or LS engine to run with an Outdrive ?

I looked into an LT1 for my stinger project but soon found out that they have a reverse cooling system so it would need a different setup then the standard merc stuff you can find just about anywhere....the LS motors are getting popular and there's a number of people who have done them...

check out this thread:
http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/g...rs-hiding.html

Bor has done one. We have another member on here that put twin 5.3L LS engines in a 24 Skater. Unlimited JD (Jamie) is playing with a LS1/bravo setup in a cool little 16' Donzi, but to the best of my knowledge it's not in finished yet. :D

I'm sure there are many others that have done the conversion as well.

Wally thanks for that link !!!

How's the skater running with that setup ?

I am very strongly considering using an LT1 , the reverse cooling as got me a little nervous but besides that I can only see advantages for my situation. I am on a very limited budget but can fab alot of the more "special" parts I would be needing and would like to keep my boat light and if possible very fuel efficient.

You talking a '90's LT1 with an Optispark or the new C7 Vette LT1?

The 5.3 truck motors are everywhere and common if you don't have to have an aluminum block.

Sidney

I'm putting a LS1 in a pontoon, if that counts with an Alpha drive

I was talking about the 90's motosr with the opti-junk....

Yeah, there are a couple out there. Depends on how wild you want to go.

http://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/...psori1bdi8.jpg

like ss sad,

I have this one build for my 21 phantom and gonna build a clone of it to put in my new cat :) on bravo its xr drives
I love it really strong engine if build right when I start the build in 2009 it was hard to find marine parts but know there pretty much parts available to just bolt on .

http://i1007.photobucket.com/albums/...psaf246874.jpg

http://i1007.photobucket.com/albums/...1/IMG_0834.jpg

http://i1007.photobucket.com/albums/...1/IMG_0870.jpg

Those are some really nice LS builds , That Phantom Bor you have is beautiful !


I was think Lt1 with Opti the mid 90's motor juste because so many of them are available around here and marine headers are available for them. I just cannot afford 3-4000$ headers for the LS heads. I am considering fabbing a set of LS headers but it looks like a challenge.

If I do the LT1 they are plenty strong blocks , the torque curves and hp resembles closely an old Big block power and torque but weigh less and cost nothing ... plus as a benefit EFI and my close friend know's those things inside out from building a bunch of turbo Lt's over the years.

How much of the original internals can you use?

thanks !
there are nice headers made in australia for arround $1500 a set that even have a murch collector or lightning make them for just in the $2K range
but I see your point budget wise the lt1 is much cheaper .

I have all forged internals but I think the stock internals will do fine when keep it stock ,save weight of a bb and still make 400+ hp not ideal for the big heavy v hulls but for the smaller and lighter boats perfect I think .

Bor , I will look around for some cheaper headers but for Now I have access to a very low mileage LT1 with minor upgrades , the motor makes about 400hp in the car it's in. With a decent set of SBC headers in the boat I would probably remain near the same hp. The boat is a 24 Progression LD i/o that's fairly light. What do you think ?

Ram , I think it will do pretty well you should be close to the power that it made in the car depending on the exhaust that has been in the car as som egood headers will produce some power ,a marine exhaust make less hp due to the cooling of the exhaust temp .

should be a nice set up !!

How do you guys handle reversion? I remember when I did a 350hp/327ci Corvette engine
I had a lot of problems with reversion.

That all depend on your came shaft , I went whit dry exhaust because have a nasty cam in it ��.
But you have too like a loud boat then !

I see you have a dry exhaust. How did you keep the
fiberglass in the transom from overheating?

I made them double all the way till the end but made the water dump inside the boat just before the transom and dump on the sides of the hull .

Excellent engineering job!

I was considering making my own headers , Bor did you fab your exhaust ? could you tell me more about the process ?

Ram , we build our own tail pipes ,as I have a friend thats real good in ss welding and have a lot of knowledge on this and everything exaly !
We switched the headers forward to get some length in the exhaust as that works better on the ls engine (proven on the dyno ) and we had a change to make some muffler to get the sound a little down .
Its quite a lot of work specialy the turns as it have to fit good and the radius on a 3.5" elbow is different then the 3" that need to go in the 3.5" and there not the same lenght so you have to think constanly about the next move or you can cut it and start over ,the straight pipes are easy .

I would not try to build headers my self it would be a night mare ! I also figured out that the price they ask for them is not that expensive anymore as its a real big job to do !

I might put my set for sale as I need two sets for my new boat and better look for 2 new sets as find a similar set .we have made them dry so you can build a pair dry tail pipes and you have no risk for reversion .

bor


Thx !

I use to race Camaro Mustang Challenge with NASA and that class allows 305's, 350's, LT1's, and LS1 motors. The LT1's seemed troublesome. Lots of issues with corrosion in the Opti's and top end/hi power RPM response. The wiring/computers also caused issues when trying to run headers and no emissions. The LS1's were less problems and a few guys are running 5.3 LS truck motors with Camaro/Firebird intakes (hood clearance issues with trunk intakes). Since you won't be running a radiator...changing Optisparks might be easier but remember it's location and where that puts it in a BOAT!

Sidney

I wouldn't touch anything with an OptiSpark if I could help it. They are a nightmare in a car and I can only imagine a marine environment.

A longtime ago we broke the code for Opti. It stands for Optional Spark, not Optimum Spark.

An LT1 in a boat would be really cool but I agree with the guys above that the OptiSpark could be a pain. I had a lot of issues with mine in my Camaro track car. The Opti is very sensitive to moisture... Also, I would be a little concerned about running a stock bottom end LT1 in a boat because the LT1 wasn't built to run at sustained high rpm for hours at a time. I was always under the impression that almost any car motor wouldn't stand up to boating abuse for very long, but is that not true? For example, I just finished building a motor for my Subaru which will be used as a dedicated road course car and I set all of the ring/piston/bearing tolerances looser than stock spec with the idea that the motor would constantly be at high rpm and the components would heat up and expand.

An LT1 in a boat makes little sense to me. They are heavy, old, OptiSpark sucks and the aftermarket abandoned them largely in favor of the LS series. Every LT1 guy I know has a master plan in the back of his head to get an LS engine.

LS is lighter, bigger aftermarket, tons of them available cheap at junk yards and Craig's list.

LT1 for a boat is a waste of time.

LT1 's were used in the boats and the power and torque curves make them ideal candidates for the job but I am concerned about the opti , I could switch it out to the COP plug setup for a couple bucks but I would rather not. This is a budget project for a sport boat that will sleep on a trailer , I don't understand all the concerns about water , all of my old boats never had a drop of water in the bilge and I would like to hope that if you guy's have water you check were it's coming from. As far as LS I would love to run one but I did my research and the cheapest headers I could find would set me back 2500$ us + the exchange rate and taxes to get this in Canada. Here's the budget gone out the window.

Do you have good access to the front of the motor in your boat? If so you could carry a spare opti and replace it on the water if you absolutely had to. It would kill a day of boating but its definitely a "do-able" job. Half the pain with the opti in my old Camaro was just getting access to it, but if the front of the motor is clear then it's not that big of a job. And as for the water in the bilge, in my experience the opti goes bad with just a slight amount of moisture usually from a leaky water pump on the LT1. If your bilge is completely dry and the water pump is good then you might be ok. I would just be concerned with the condensation that usually forms in the bilge because that will definitely screw with the opti. But if you can change one out on the water then maybe its worth a shot.

Yes Dan , their would be lots of space to actually change it in place. I have heard of the opti issue's with condensation but a friend of mine who because of budget became very familiar with making big power on LT1's tells me that the first version of the opti was really bad because it had no vent at all and would condensate badly , then it evolved into a version that had a vacuum port to suck air through it to keep it dry and then the last version that has a simple vent that gets flooded when the water pump leaks on it like you said.... Because the motors are so cheap and I have access to one with very low mileage and spring upgrades and valve retainer I would be tempted to try. I am also considering running SBC manifolds or if I can find mild perfomance marine manifolds.

The other problems with the opti he was telling me was simply the wheel trigger coming off the shaft from not being loctite in place.

I could be wrong on the vented versions vs non vented but something like that :P

Is there video of this boat running I haven't seen somewhere??

That's an awesome looking boat and the rigging looks just as good!

hmm, if you aren't taking the boat way out in the ocean then I say go for it. I was looking at pictures of some LT1s in master crafts and it looks like they had a coil pack bolted to one of the heads rather than running the opti. If the opti doesn't hold up then maybe switch over to the set up that master craft uses. Here is a pretty clear picture of the master craft set up...

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psfxatxrdm.jpg

They use a Deltek conversion , my friend ran one of those LTCC conversion kits with LS1 coil pack instead but that was only to take the Spark out of the opti and still used the opti's trigger wheel and sensor. From what I can understand that's just to prevent spark scatter when running big numbers.

That is correct this is a lake boat a 24' Progression.

If you have to have headers...but...there are good manifold systems for the LS's for 1G +/- a few hundred.

Let me know where I can find those , I have been looking but without success... so I keep going back to standard SBC head port manifold or headers. If I could get my hands on a cheap set of ls fitting exhaust I would do an LS

Check with Kem Equipment....they are the Kodiac Marine place. They sell a bunch of marinized NA and SC LS Motors for the NW jet pump crowd. I checked with them about 5-6 yrs ago and was a few $$$ short of $1k at the time.

The LT1 heads were the test bed for cylinder head technology that ended up in the vortec truck motors. I would bet there is absolutely no gains running an LT1 vs a 350 Vortec setup.

Here s one when I had a black hawk on running 29 props doing 95 mph @ 6500 but ended up whit a imco-3" as the hull have not enough natural bow lift .
There are more vids from different set ups as we started whit normal bravo and then a BH and then the imco and several different props , so far the stock bravo 28" was the fastest 96 mph

http://youtu.be/Dh1AVt_vc28

I emailed them this morning will see what they have to offer , if the cost is decent I may end up switching to an LS platform.