Wiring before and after under dash. And new pump mounts that will attach to the backseat bulkhead.

I know it looks like a mess.

During all of this JimV (Valako Race Heads) was working with Dart Heads to cast some aluminum Pro1 heads to match his hand porting. He asked me if I would like to trial a couple pairs. Seeing the boat was running great with minimum problems I decided why not. So I needed to refresh the look of the power with a new top end. Off with the iron Merlin heads and on with the new Dart aluminum heads.

I taped off the back of the boat, sanded and painted the K-Plane mounts. Installed gaffrig mufflers, mounted a $25 harbor freight 250PSI tire air compressor to actuate the muffler cylinders with a NOS valve to dump pressure. (between the hydraulic pumps in the previous post).

Mounted the drives and put it all back together. End of winter 2010 and mid summer 2011 project.

Next to come winter 2011.....Fill in the hook and straighten the bottom of the old girl :)
Need to get the pics in order.

Very nice job.

Nice work! Hopefully I will see the same results when I start going through mine.

always a work in progress. a friend got sick of working on his boat and spent 22k on a brand new (in 2006) 20 bayliner. 5 years later he got sick of working on it and sold it for 12k. at least with old stuff you expect it...

Very true. I couldn't imagine how much actual time I have into this boat if I added it up. I look at it as an apprenticeship that I am paying for with my time. I had never done any extensive work on a boat in my life until I bought this boat. Now I feel I can conquer most anything dealing with a boat and I will feel comfortable managing a newer and larger ride in the future.

If a lot of members look closely they will see their stuff that I bought from them in the swap shop. I have a ton of swap shop parts on the Panther.

Very cool man. Now you just need to bolt the blowers on, and do a sweet blower hatch. Love the old scarabs

Thanks,
Gathering info for cam selection from JimV and others. So if anyone wants to put there $0.02 in it is open for discussion. Still need to find out my exact compression #'s. Also need to find out exactly how far the pistons are in the hole. Might do a little more chamber porting on the heads. I called JE/SRP and talked to one of their piston engineers. They said if I needed to I would be able to fly cut some of the dome off the pistons I have to knock down the compression. (I was surprised they said this) I do not have hollow domes and they gave me the weight/cc. And minimum wall/dome thickness they recommend for NA and Blower applications.

I am trying to get the blower hatch done in the next few weeks. I bought scoops and 3/4" Baltec Balsa core material. Ordering the 1708 bi-axial glass and resin this week.

The blowers look great sitting on the shelf and I am a little apprehensive about putting them on. The current engines are running like a fine Swiss time piece and I don't want to get into them and add headaches. All I have done this year is add Ignitions and gas. (LOTS of gasoline)