Just a brief update...

Garage is done/signed-off by the county inspectors so I started moving a bunch of crap into it... and finally just brought these two 8.8's home yesterday.

Still need to wire and hang lights on the 1st floor so I can see WTF I'm doing and will be digging into these things in the coming weeks.

Dragracer_Art please contact me
 

Hello Art please contact me my account is to new to be able to message you but please get hold of me i would appreciate it greatly
Thanks John Hawkins @Rolling7s

Dragracer_Art Need Help
 

Trey Ordonez at River Speed and Marine is the guy you need to chat with. He has/had a bunch of these motors and is local to you.

I'd probably sell one of mine @ $2k but Im on opposite side of the country near Atlanta and I've put a little time into them already with teardown/cleanup.

Trey is in Phx and I'm sure has everything you need to slap one together.

https://riverspeed-marine.com/

He has also posted earlier in this thread as Cerberus66

Another update on these 8.8 motors...

I found a set of OEM forged flat tops for one of them, and a new set of Mahle forged flat tops for the other one. The new set are for a 505BBC bore/stroke/rod combo but the dimensions are perfect in a stock bore 8.8 block. Bore is 4.350, rods are 6.7" with a .990 pin and 1.27CH. They are literally "drop-in" pistons and have .0055" skirt clearance.

The OEM flat tops needed valve reliefs in them for peace of mind... so I used an in-head flycutter that worked beautifully.

Havent decided completely yet on which of these is going into the boat. One will be all fuel injected PSI stuff and one will get the 8.1 cathedral port heads and Dart 4bbl intake.

Cant seem to attach pictures for some reason

One more wrench
 

I just picked one of these up that has the LS rockers and beehive springs on it and doesn't have injectors bungs of any kind in the head or intake. It appears to have been ran on propane and could possibly be an industrial application. Also interesting is the smaller diameter push rod on the intake side compared to the exhaust.

Not that it needs it right now, but I'd love to swap one of these into my Suburban. My 8.1 has a little bit of an oil leak that I need to find... maybe the engine needs to come out?? 💡🤔

Plan A
 

That's my plan as well. I mocked up an 8.1 in my square body dually and have been driving it for a couple years. I like it a lot but it's never enough. I plan to install the Raylar heads on my 8.8 and the Whipple supercharger. I'll then bolt that to a 6L90 and put it back in the truck. My plans for the 8.1 involve more Raylar stuff and a 5th gen camaro.

Don't see these engines on ebay now. lol. Word must be getting out.

Just wanted to update this thread I started awhile ago...

I built both of the 8.8's I had. Sold one of them a few months ago and have been dicking around with #2 ever since.
Finally gave up trying to learn Holley EFI tuning and went back to my roots. I pulled the PSI heads and intake so I could replace them with a pair of 8.1 cathedral port heads and Dart intake. Topped it off with a marine 850 and the thing fires immediately at the blip of the starter.

Here's a video I took last night: There are a few videos on my page with it running on the Holley EFI system and also the other 8.8 I built with the Merc 496HO cam. A couple small blocks Idid are on there too.