As far as the valve covers, pretty sure the manifolds will need to be taken loose. Sorry for the bad news. ��

I had the same problem with my 85 Scarab III. I went back and forth with the guys at Hardin Marine to get a combination that would fit in between the drives in the proper line with the drives down. With my bennett tab cylinders there was no way to install the cylinders outside the drives and be inline with the drives in the down position.

sometimes you can get lucky and snake them out. however when it is all said and done it will probably be just as quick to take the valve covers off.

Still messing with the hydraulic steering. Gonna have to have my machinist make a stainless plate to lay over the old holes in the dash to mount the hydraulic helm to.

On the engines, I've got the blowers in place. I've got two more Holley 750''s ordered as well as the carb plates and linkage. I have got to see about getting some thermostat housings coming that fit the blower intakes. I also have got to see what I'm gonna do about the pulleys. On the upper pulley I need about 4.3-4.5" to get somewhere between 3-4 psi. My engines are already 9.2:1 compression. Anyway I don't want to overdo it.
On the lower pulleys I've gotta find a way to make these 10 notch serpentine pulleys work with my v belt pulleys. Not a lot of info out there on these 256 blowers.

I was planning on using these. Ebay item #131741681589

Remember when this was all you could hope for!!!! This BOATING THING is a bad addiction!!!!

It all looks fantastic by the way!

Remember: "If some is good..........more's better!"

Thanks for the info Scott. I'll check that out. Thanks CDShack. This is it. I don't see me doing anything else. Nothing major anyway.

Yeah let me know how that works out for you! These boats are a god damn disease! . Coming along real nice BTW!! Keep it up!

We were able to get some stuff done today. It's kind of slow go right now. We got the Chargers set in place and the adapter plates and carbs with linkage. Gotta get two more spark arrestors, some fuel hoses, and two more fuel splitters for the port side. We have various ports and holes in the manifolds to stop up (apparently related to fuel injection). My hei ignition would not fit behind the blowers so I had to get these msd units.

Also gotta figure out what we're gonna do with the thermostat housing. Mines not gonna work, and the big kicker on the engines is getting the pulley situation rectified.

My machine shop guy is making some bushings for my Latham steering cylinders to fit my imco brackets, also he's making a plate to adapt my helm to the console. More to come soon...