corey331

Well, i have been busy for the last week trying to get as much done as possible in the evenings and on the weekend, Got the motor dropped in last week and contrary to popular belief, I didn't have to molest my boat one bit to get it in there.

Don't mind my ugly bilge area, it's going to get redone this winter when I upgrade to k-planes, hydraulic steering and an aluminum swim platform.

Motor dropped in



Put the headers on so I could start doing some plumbing and mounting



Here you can see the Moroso adapters I am running that convert the LS water pump to a BBC style allowing me to run the Hardin BBC crossover. Since the t-stat on an LS motor is located in the circulating pump, I had to use a remote thermostat housing which I mounted on the back of my back seat. This allowed me to make sure I had equal length lines feeding it ensuring I had equal water pressure to both sides of the motor. The black 3/8" hose you see on the starboard side is coming off the steam crossover out of the heads. I drilled and tapped the bottom of the housing, and put in a barbed fitting that feeds into.



Here I built a bracket that mounts to the floor for my oil filters. Once that was mounted, I could plumb it in. I had a custom oil pan built by KEVKO Racing pans that holds 10 quarts. When they built it I had them go ahead and weld in -AN fittings for a remote oil filter which made plumbing a breeze. Also you can see that I did my absolute best to hide any and all wiring. In this pic, the ignition and sensors are completely wired. The only thing that can be seen is the brain for the Daytona Sensors ignition which I mounted on the transom next to the port exhaust exit.






At this point I am waiting on my new gauges so I can get those all wired in, then it won't be long till I can dip her into my little local lake and give it a shakedown. Shouldn't be long now!!!

donzi matt

iTrader: (1)

I have used 2 Kevko circle track pans and I am very pleased with them. Nice quality and the price is pretty hard to beat. Good choice and I love the build.

corey331

Another cool little tid bit of info. We dropped the motor in using a telehandler on my buddies farm. SInce he has a big truck scale there, we set the boat on it to get a final weight. The results were better than I thought as far as weight goes We weighed the boat and trailer before and after the motor was in. The motor without the headers weighed in at 480lbs. With the headers coming in at 62 lbs, the final weight of the fully dressed motor is 542lbs!! The 310hp 454 that came out of the boat with the iron heads, iron intake and iron exhaust weighed double that!!! My concern now is, how will taking that much weight out of the transom effect the handling of the boat? I'm hoping I can combat a lot of it with the prop, if not, my haudraulic steering might come by way of an ITS extension box. Just have to wait and see how it does!!

kidturbo

Nice work. Looks very clean.

hvymtl939

I've started assembling parts for my LSX build. Buddy of mine snagged a pair of LS7 head for a song for me. It's going to be a several year process, but the goal is to get the motor built, then find a suitable hull for it to end up in. Would love to find a 27' Fever needing power when the time comes.

hogie roll

That weight reduction is awesome. Could you imagine doing this in a triple boat? Would literally lose a ton.

Wasted Income

Depends on beginning and ending setup I guess.

Short-block to shortblock, an iron LS is 50 lbs lighter than a BBC.
An aluminum LS shortblock is 160 lbs lighter.

Lots of other variables to consider...head material, intake material, etc etc.


When I swapped the BBC out of my boat for an iron LS, the boat didn't feel any lighter, or more nimble, or balanced any differently....even going from iron block, heads, intake to iron block, aluminum heads, plastic intake.

corey331

Yeah, this is very true. The reason I had such a dramatic weight loss is because the engine I took out was iron block, iron heads, iron intake and iron exhaust. Now I am aluminum block, heads, intake and headers. My guess is i'm only 200-300 pounds lighter than a hp500.

On a side note, I had some reversion issues with mine when I got it running on the hose, so I had to send the headers back to Lightning to be made dry. I was told that they were shipped yesterday, so I should see them by Friday. Gonna get them installed this weekend and should be water testing very soon!!!

Wasted Income

Good info. I love seeing real numbers...which sometimes can be eye opening. People always assume LS stuff is SO much lighter than BBC stuff...and that is sometimes the case and sometimes not.

corey331

Yeah, I mean even a 300lb weight savings is pretty substantial. I think it will be even more noticeable in a multi motor application. I would love to see someone with a 283 Checkmate or 29 Fountain that has twin 454's do the LS swap just to see the weight/handling difference with the same power level.