i would reason with the guy and say hey look there may or may not be an issue with this engine, its 3-5 grand to replace this engine down the road and I would build that into the price. The guy would probably more than happy to get it off of his hands if he felt the price was still fair.

As far as smoking its hard to tell without seeing the smoke, all I know is older carbd engines smoke a heck of alot more than efi. Another thing is is my boat smoked alot more on premium started runing pump gas it doesnt smoke anymore, but it wasnt blue smoke either.

I wouldnt be so scared on everything either, if its an older boat theres always going to be some ticks, clicks, smoke etc. Doesnt mean you still buy something, but some people get hyped on an old boat not being perfect.

im sorry but your post makes no sense,premium is pump gas and are you saying an engine will smoke on 92 premium but not on 87 regular,because that is pretty much imposable.
:party-smiley-004:

cyl bore is checked with a dial bore gage,you can,t check for roundness with inside mic.

If he will take $6g off or more, and you can do a lot of the work then I say go for it. As the season is already here, maybe look at a short block all ready to go. I would think If you can get 10g off the price, I would probably just buy a couple of 540 short blocks and pump up the power also. Good luck.

my 454s were built to run pump gas, i bought it and thought like everybody else that it needed premium. I got on here and asked why is my transom always black, they said even with the 454 it does burn all the fuel when its premium thus the soot or extra smoke. switched to pump gas and no longer have soot on or smoke marks on the transom.

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/g...transom-2.html

check this out, just what i was told and it worked.

again,if you transom is black on 92,it will also be black on 87.the higher octain fuel burns a little slower,but will not cause the transom to get black,something else is/was causing it.one more thing,both 92 and 87 come from the gas pump,so they are both PUMP GAS.

ok pump gas I mean 87 not 92 or 93, weve always called pump gas 87 around ehre. I switched from 92 to 87 and black transom is gone without changing up anything else, it was over night.

I have read marine engines built for 87 like mine even being big bocks can not fully consume or burn premium as efficient as they can with 87.

I took the reccomendation in that forum and I have read it elsewhere and after switching no longer have a black transom. So I dont know what to say

I admit this is something I usually leave to my machinist.

With that said, I do have a decent inside mic set and figured it would work. Granted it would take a lot longer since I would have to take lots of seperate measurements, rotating the mic within the bore and moving up and down the bore.

I've never checked for out-of-roundness with a inside mic but I don't understand why it wouldn't work. Can you elaborate on this?

I did find some self-centering Fowler dial bore gauges for abt $100 that have a 35-160mm range and .01mm resolution. Guess I could go that route if need be.

Modern rings seat almost instantly. I have never had a rebuilt engine smoke after the initial start up. Something wasnt done right and that's why it's smoking. My guess is it rattled hard enough to break pieces of a couple of pistons, then there are others that are damaged also.