So, this past weekend I came across lovemachines 24' with twin outboards for sale, I have been looking at the option of converting my 24' that is setup with a single 454 over to outboards just for the comfort of two engines...
My brother and I took a ride down from upstate NY and purchased the boat Sunday. Yesterday we put it in the water and took it out. Both engines fired up first try smoking out the rest of the dock, gotta love the two strokes. I pulled the boat out and started playing with the trim and jack plate just above idle. With the jack plate down and motors trimmed I pushed the throttles, not knowing what to expect though I was not impressed. Took forever to get on plane even playing with the throttles I could not get it to pop out of the water or even have a respectable "holeshot". Much slower then my 454/330 setup. The engines sounded fine and did not sound as though the props were cavitating just as though there was no ass to them. So I pulled to the dock picked up my brothers and we went back out, got the boat up to speed, an embarrassing 45 MPH after playing with the trim. After about 3/4 of a mile the stbd motor just revved up as though it was out of gear so I throttled back and scratched my head. I killed both motors then just started the stbd, all was fine, attemped to put in gear and there was nothing, I figuret the shift cable snapped or something along those lines so we idled back to the dock on the port and poked around, everything looked fine and the cable was moving the shift lever. tilted the motors up to spin the prop by hand and found the problem.
Whenever the motor was last serviced only three of the five bolts that hold the lower drive on were installed, the two studs just above the prop had no nuts. The nose of the mid section cracked and the lower pulled about an inch down from the mid. attached are some pics.
I am looking for a replacement mid but cannot find any with the 4"x4"x4" exhaust box at the lower ass end of the mid does anyone know what mid this is?
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That is some chitty luck! Did you take the boat for a test drive before you bought it?

Those boxes are an add on. Bob's machine sells them, but I wouldn't reccomend putting them back on. They only add some noise but offer no performance gain and also weaken the mid section because of the required drilling.

Those mids are pretty easy to find and are usually cheap (couple hundred bucks used) You just need to make sure you get one with the 3 ram integral trim not a single ram. (The single ram requires a seperately mounted trim motor where yours are intergral with the mid section.)

If you are the least biut mechanical you can switch all this stuff out yourself with simple handle tools, a cherry picker and a new set of powerhead gaskets.

Also make sure you replace all of the lock nuts on both lowers. They do wear out and loosen themselves.

Like Ziemer said, those are add ons, dont do much, but do sound cool as hell. That boat should pop right up, heck my 24 with only 10" setback, and a single tired 225 pops right up, and runs high 50's. once you get it back together do some prop testing, and play with the height of the motors, it takes time to fugure the setup out on these hulls with outboards, but once you get it, you will love it. What ROMS were you running at when you got the whopping 45??

wow that sucks what did you do with the red and white 24ft that u had?

Whoa. That has to be frustrating... I was going to buy that one if you didn't.

Thanks, I am going to look at getting a used one this weekend. It's frustrating to say the least but I hope the stbd lower had something to do with such a slow start / top speed. I also realized after the fact that the tabs are labled backwards so that was with trim tabs down, would think it would help the start but may explain the slow top end. It def threw me off when I went to hit it and it was like there was nothing. it was almost as though it responded up to 1/4 throttle but over that it didn't matter where the sticks were. I will have to play with it more when I get it together.
both engines had no problem revving up out of gear and I checked both were going into gear prior to running it up.

at 45 the rpms were just under 5k if I remember correctly. I didn't know what outboards redline but I figued if the chevy can go to 5k then the 2 strokes must.

I still have the red and white one, it is for sale but I am not pushing it. now that I have the outboards on this one I am going to replace the 330 with something along the lines of a 454 / 420 ... more of a lake cruiser for the north east.

Back in 1993 - 1994 that 24' would run right at 72-74 MPH.

JO

Beck,

Where in Upstate you located?

Same motors as I have on the Challenger..spin em 55-5800 and theyll last forever