Glad to hear you got it going Tom.. What combo did you end up with? I have about 7 hrs. on my new 383 and she is impressive.. i went from stock motor swingin a 21" at 4500 rpm to with the 383 swingin a 24" at 5400rpm.. I need to get it down to around 5200 with a 25"... keep us updated.


Travis

Congrats, Tom. I know it has been a long trip to here and I hope your water testing and prop tweaking goes well

Traviss, its good to see some similar numbers to what I have. I rebuilt 2 406's into 409's. I used to swing a 22 inch hydromotive at 5000. Now my secondaries haven't come on until after 5000. I was thinking I would have to go up about 3-4 inches. And you confirm that. The old 406's were beat and battered and were not making anywhere near what they should. Tom and I were building our engines about the same time with almost identical parts except his went south when his builder goofed something up. I've got about 6 hours on mine and they are truly awesome. Tom's I'm sure are even hotter because he went with a more agressive cam than I did on the second engine.

By the way, how is yours jetted. I tore one of my carbs down and confirmed they were 68 and 81 with 6.5 powervalve like the holley list number says. I'd be interested to know if its in the ball park.

et al,

I ended up with 10.3:1 (.040 quench, so I'm told, nice and tight), ported Vortec heads, Edelbrock Performer (no room for the RPM, have to build a new dog house which means completely redoing the rear lounge... which I want to do just no money for that... baby on the way!! ), Comp XE-274, SCAT/GM rotating assembly, KB pistons. Clearances are all on the loose side... .003 on the rods and mains... and oil pressure is a nice fat 55 lbs at 2k RPM (right above 40 PSI at idle). Still using the Merc ignition (why not, seems to work well) and I set the timing at 9* BTDC with 31* @ 4k RPM to start... I'll start messing with the timing once it's broken in. Anyway, like I said earlier, this one is totally different that the other motor. It starts just fine, sounds like it's supposed to, and seems to rev like a banshee. I can't wait for Saturday morning to get here!

Birdog,

I'll keep in mind the info on the flightly Liberator handling. My boat is ass-heavy but no where near the level of a hull with twins. I won't even be flirting with any real speeds yet anyway. I'll just be out cruising nicely to get her broken in. I figure that buy mid-July (if I have time to be out on the water) I'll start working the motor to figure out the prop and so forth.

mxz800,

Yes, it was a rough season last year with a dead motor and all. It sucked royally being dry docked. It was a good thing in the end though since I was out of comission with surgery in June. It took a while to recover from it and pretty much ate up any fun summer stuff that I had planned anyway. This summer will be much better!

I'll keep everyone updated!

Tom

TOM, If you get that boat over 60 MPH please call me. I wan't to know your secrets.

For what its worth.......I ended up with Hydramotive Intimidators on mine.{sorta cleaver} Gave me the stern lift i needed & great people to deal with! Best of luck with youre new project!! Ill be following youre progress on this Beast!!

P.S. Milord runs a 241 Lib also.great guy,might help with info also

Birddog,

How do you like the Intimidators. I have a pair of 22"ers on my Nova II, but find they are hard to plane with and give me a ton of slip at 5000. About 25% slip. My boat is ass heavy with twins on a 26 foot boat. My cruise is nice at 37 at 3000 and acceleration from 3000 to 4000 is incredible, but they just lose it at higher rpms. I'm going to try a couple 25" Mirage plus and see how they do.

Look at these numbers.

37 MPH at 3000, 47 at 3700, 58 at 5000. Something is happening between 3700 and 5000. All these numbers are with me and 100 gallons of gas.

I'm kinda bummed I cant sell one of the props. I took them to a shop to have them checked because I was going to sell them to fund the new props. But the prop guy found that one blade had a different pitch from the root all the way out. Quite a big difference. I called Hydromotive and they wouldn't warranty it because I'm not the original owner. Don't really blame them for that even though these props are about in as good as shape as a prop that has at least 4 seasons on it can get and its a manufacturing problem. I can sell the good prop just not the one with a funky blade. Oh well, I don't want to stick someone with a problem that I have.

When I worked on my 750 last week, it had 72's in the primarys with a 5 powervalve. no jets in the secondaries, just a metering block.

Looks pretty close. Hopefully all my soot and black plugs are coming from blown power valves. Although the one I pulled out looks pretty good. I'll hopefully get the other today. I goofed on my quanity when I ordered from Jegs.

Tom, the motor sounds great. I still want to do mine. I can never decide if I want to paint the boat and do the motors are just sell it and buy a bigger, faster, newer boat. Probably cheaper in the long run.

Let us know how she handles at WFO when you get it broken in. That will help me make my decision at doing my motors. If it becomes a handful I'll probably sell it. Mine has twins by the way. I just put new 21" Mirage +'s on and it seems to like them a lot. I'm only spinning them at 4200 at WFO with fuel and 5 people on board but that is still in the recommended rpm range for these motors. The props are helping it carry the bow better, of course it still drags it's tail big time.