how long does your engines last?

You are correct I forgot about that experiment.......good thing is they learned from it and did not repeat their mistake.

We all have our preferred ways of doing things. There are some extremely talented successful engine builders/riggers in this industry , some would agree and some would disagree with what has been posted here. I've seen engines roll out of Wesco racing, and many other high end builders shops without circulating pumps, without thermostats, that have absolutely kicked azz and lived long happy lives . I'm not just talking about on the dyno, that doesn't mean squat. I'm talking about holding the engines wfo for miles and miles. If I walked in wescos shop and started telling him

"Dave, your setup isn't allowing water to stay in the block long enough

Dave your cylinder to cylinder temps are uneven with this crossover setup here

Dave you need to get your block temps up to 200 degrees

dave you need to tighten up your ring gaps and bearing clearances "

He'd probably throw a hammer at me and tell me to get the f out. Lol

Poor TomZ. Hes building a basic 454 with a 250 blower. A setup that's been ran for decades . But, the poor guy is probably so confused right now he's prob ready to bolt a 330 merc engine in the boat and call it a day!

Quick story about Dave from wesco. He built a pair of 800s for my buddies Top Gun and rigged the boat. On the first time out, my buddy was driving . He cruised at like 3500 rpm. Finally dave instructs my buddy to open it up. My buddy does for a quick burst, then pulls back. Dave says "why are you pulling back?" Buddy says "Goin easy on them". Dave says "put those throttles down and I'll tell you when to let off". They were held wfo for a very long time out on lake michigan that day. After the fact, those engines never skipped a beat, and my buddy ran the snot out of them. They had no water stats, and no circulating pumps.

Is it the textbook perfect setup, no. Did they run great and stay tether for a long time, they sure did. And I prob know of at least 30-40 local marine blown big blocks in the Chicago area running that setup with no issues either.

just goes to show that opinions are like azzholes!! everyone has one!! lmao

I don't have a problem with the non-bling factor. Actually it's better cause there is no better feeling than blowing by someone in a $150,000 boat with a $10,000 boat and if the end up at the same destination and ask you what you have in that thing you can open the hatch and tell them a stock 454 with a little bit of cam.

MT I agree they will "work" "sort of" depends on your definition of work........ but that does not make it the proper thing to do.....making a system for dry sump is not cheap and adds a lot of cost to the build but its my name on the line so I do what I do.

I have nothing but respect for Dave and what he does, we are kind of brothers (good story about the first time we met) but we take different paths.

I had that very thing happen at 1000 Island PR,,motors were purple at the time,,guy swore I was lying.walk away shaking his head.I had cross over back then too,same as today.also on that run I made the owner of Bullet blow his engines up.came in from a test run and he asked how fast,,I said an easy 94mph w/ some left.went down to check boat after some parting and he was down changing pulleys on his engines.He didn't last to the first corner.
Fun time for sure.

there are a few ways to get to the same end result of being fast and reliable.

Good discussion fellas. 7 pages and no personal insults!

Back to a question I had earlier. What do the oems do for ring gaps in aluminum block engines that are subjected to -20 or even colder ambient temps? I'd imagine there has to be quite a bit of expansion going from -20 to 210*.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]537631[/ATTACH] closed cooling.

Want to do a reverse cooling with new cylinder heads.