Ready to kick this pos down the road…
 

Give me some guidance…

509’s, custom 235/241 hyd roller cams, single plane Merlins, 850 Demon carbs, MPI (Voyager) distributors.

Half the time, engines act like timing is way advanced, won’t start because cannot turn over. Five minutes later, no problem. Timing at idle is 22-28 degrees. Revs good. Put in gear, and stalls. Will not restart. Acts like advanced to the moon. Retard distributor, starts and sounds like a fueler with 16 degrees, won’t advance either. I’m about done with this mother f’r.

Anyone want a Formula 311 cheap??

Seriously, what’s a good, not too totally stupid expensive ignition to throw on this thing?

Excuse tone… I’m a few beers and rum punch in. ****ing boat.

What ignition do you have ?
You sure not some reversion causing startibg issues ?

Sorry. I have a dim bulb. I didn’t read half of what you wrote. Lol.

what kind (style) starters do you have ?

I’ll give you $1800.00 :)

Shoul be a reversion issue. TRS with exit just at the transom. In the water the tilt was enough to have to adjust floats.

Really strange. Idle AFR will go from 13 and change into the 11s. This is reving then going back to idle.

Maybe carbs are junk.

Idle kicked to 1000 and they both die going into gear just trying to get back on the trailer.

Starters are brand new gear reduction.

Did this run good before and not now ?

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...afb676f38a.jpg

Joking aside, why not Marine MSD? Seems they all have their problems.

Tom
 

I had same starting problem on a 502 after a starter it turned out to be a hidden battery cable end ,looked good outside but poor c objection inside ,also had a battery switch mess me up ,it was new!!! Good luck

Tom
 

Hei outta box 75$

if your using delco external hei voyager set up something is way wrong we run a hard core 540 big carb it starts with no kick back and in the heat turned 6500 with out missing a single plug firing it runs and starts better than the msd with start retard this boat even idles and stays crisp on throttle up timing is at 34 at 4000 idles around 18-20

Drunk. Yes.

What really ticks me off is that my timing light took a dump right in the middle of trying to figure out what the f was going on.

Still drunk.

First time in the water with the new engines. Wasn’t just the engines. I blew a hydraulic line too so no steering. Oh, and I think my gf is out the door too. What a day.

Back to drinking.

So with Voyager… ever seen the timing hang? I set to 34 degrees at 3500 but it remained at idle. This was all during troubleshooting (I thought timing was already set but wasn’t’). Just odd running. This was port. Starboard was finicky going into gear but since the timing light quit, I had nothing to tell me if similar was happening (don’t think it was on that side).

Dying in gear from 1k rpm idle an issue. Like 500 rpm drop, enough to shut down with no recovery.

who's custom cam?

They are my cams that idled at 700 all day on my carb setups. I swapped them out when I went EFI. I believe timing was 28°-36°

You can fix broken boats. You can’t fix broken women.

Let’s get started on the boat and stay away from The booze. It’s obviously isn’t helping your attitude. :wink

Timing light first.

if your checking timing at 1k, that probably explains why you think timing is hanging, as the advance comes in by big amts by 800 rpm.

This is from volvo penta manual on their engines using the GM EST eith carbs.

Volvo’s manusl on the GM EST:
https://f01.justanswer.com/oldneweng..._Delco_EST.pdf

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...7351cd7772.png

low voltage will make these units screw up run a jumper wire from bat to the positive on coil

Morning folks.

Timing… I was trying to set total timing to 34-35 at 3k figuring that it would be at the top of the curve. Bringing speed back down to about 1k the timing was still holding at 35. That’s when I thought there may have been an issue with the distributor. Checking the same on the other one was more along what I expected and inline with the Volvo specs. I went back to the problem one and after shutting down, it seemed to correct itself though I did not check timing at 3k again (just idle). A few minutes later the bulb died in the light and we were done.

Electrical connections are all good. Clean grounds, good cables.

Timing was one issue. Dying in gear was an even bigger one. According to the rpm on the timing light, we were going from 960 to under 600 and then stall. They would restart without a problem but stall quickly going into gear. Made getting back on the trailer fun. AFRs were showing a little rich, mid 12s at the high idle. Thinking something is up with the carburetors. I didn’t have a chance to hook up my vacuum gauge during all of this.. wish I had.

I’ll mess with it some today. Also need to figure out which hydraulic line is spraying all over the transom.

Appreciate all the help guys.

Sorry to hear about it! Is today better?

I was really hoping for a successful test yesterday. Stuff happens. The title of this thread was the result of a number of frustrations all at once.

Today? Better. The weather is a little iffy today so I may not work on it today.

I’ll probably order modules for the distributors just to go ahead rule those out as issues. They’re from 1998 so I’m sure they’re due.

I believe your idle circuit is too rich. I set my idle 13.7 and as much timing as I can. My new EFI setups needed me to up idle timing to 32° so it wouldn't stall during shift. I ran 2 different timing curves with those cams; locked 35° and 28°-36° High Idle on my Crane HI-6M's. I only netted 8° not the 10° it advertised, my light could have been off too.

do you know the specs?
as for the idle in gear,,its time to strap that boat to the dock and w/ a friend start trying different timing and idle screw adjustments till it goes in and out of gear.and like you said,,carb could be totally f-ed up.

I baselined the carbs and got idle down on the trailer but agree that it’s probably f-ed and needs tuning in gear. Agree that the way to do it is while strapped into a slip.

Something I ran across when modifying the ecm bin files on my Camaro years ago, is that ign timing has a significant effect on WB02 readings. I agree, get a good timing light with adv capability and see what's up with the timing before condemning the carbs.

FWIW, my boat came with MSD marine ign. With the exception of the dist mechanical adv rusting and a box failure, its worked pretty well. The rusting was addressed by replacing the springs and spraying corrosion inhibitor on them. 5 years later, no more rust. Also carry a spare ign box now.:D

Edit: Mounting the MSD boxes to the boat as opposed to the eng, seems to make them last much longer. Don't think they like vibration.

"Edit: Mounting the MSD boxes to the boat as opposed to the eng, seems to make them last much longer. Don't think they like vibration."Last edited by zz28zz; Today at 01:56 PM.

That's where mine was mounted for 15 years, away from engine heat and vibration. Still have the box and it still works fine. Treated the Pro Billet as well.

For idle tuning/set up, I back the trailer in at the ramp and leave the boat strapped to the trailer.

Way easier/safer than at dock.
Done that a bunch of times if no other choice but on trailer is #1 pick.

Tom - best money I ever spent was my Daytona Sensors ignition.

Hope you get it sorted while there is still some summer left

If both engines are doing the same thing I cannot imagine it being something in the distributors. Chances of both of them failing at the same time in the same way are pretty darn slim.

I would be going through the entire electrical system and checking all connections. Especially grounds. Take every thing off, wire brush the terminals and put it back together.

https://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/...igniton-2.html

See last sentence of post 18.

Not sure if that applies to your setup or not but might explain no change in adv.

Actually, I think it’s opposite but it’s showing the way it is because it’s probably getting into the mains a little. They should hold a good in gear and not have such a drastic drop from out of gear idle. I went through some old threads yesterday and found the same issues. Most were due to lean conditions and overcompensation of the idle speed adjustment.

I’ll need to baseline the transition slots again and this time actually try setting everything in gear.

Have seen that thread. I don’t have anything plugged into the 4-pin port. I set timing based on the maximum. Good catch though!

Gotcha. Sounds like a bad ign module as you suspected prev.

It will be interesting to see if the other eng has the same "no adv" issue.

GM Carbureted Engine Distributor Module 10482830

General Motors system. Used On: Marine Inboards w/ GM Engines. Replaces: Marine Power 0807-006M5, GM 10482830, 16139399, D1965A; Mercury Marine 811637, 811637T, 850487; OMC 3854003

I used a D1965A module years back on a carb’d boat and it worked fine. I can’t answer how thr more recents are.

I just installed some DUI 000444 modules and they seem to work fine, FWIW.

It advanced for sure. But it also didn’t want to return. It seemed to also want to throw a lot of advance to it at startup a couple times (we thought the battery was quitting). Similar to a hot engine, very advanced initial timing symptom. I manually backed down the timing and then it would turn over and started. For whatever reason, it was hung-up. That symptom didn’t happen again, but it for sure held timing at 34/35 at idle speed. Shutting down and restarting was fine, but the light died so I couldn’t see what it was doing from there. She went on the trailer shortly after.

Thinking a couple of issues… carbs out of whack. And something odd with this distributor.

I like their stuff. Might be worth a call to see if they know what kind of base timing their module has.

These numbers are for carbureted apps so I’d think they’d work fine. Finding one that isn’t a knock off is the hard part.