Hi, new guy to the forum. Seeking advice/being told I am on the right/wrong track.

I am currently working with my project boat for this season. A little background on it. The hull is a 1981/2 Glastron SX190. For those unfamiliar, its a bowrider, 19ft, sundeck over the engine, quoted by the brochure as weighing 1250 pounds. The brochure does not state what power this figure was with, so I would give it +- 200. Current power is a 260 Mercruiser. This consists of a 350 chevy, Alpha Gen One (1.47:1) spinning a plain jane 21 pitch oem stainless prop. The boat supposedly ran around 55-57 before the 260 died from overheating (water in oil, still ran, PO admitted to it running hot, my guess is the impeller gave up). I am pretty much writing off the whole engine and only planning to reuse external stuff. Hull is solid and not waterlogged just a little dog eared from being used a whole lot. Out drive feels "okay" which means absolutely nothing, but the PO did say it was serviced regularly with oil changes. I do have a line on a known good spare. This was and will remain a non saltwater boat. Raw water cooled, no exchanger. This is sort of a limited budget build.

My engine build is as follows:

• Vortec heads (64cc chamber), spring pockets cut, guides cut to allow greater than .500" lift. Springs and retainers replaced with the ones for the cam. drilled pushrod holes, guide plates and screw in studs, Stock valve sizes, minor "cleanup" porting, nothing to alter the flow characteristics appreciably.
• XM270HR camshaft + solid roller lifters. (yep, I know how to live with these, and how to set these up on a hydraulic cam without lash ramps)
• 1.5 ratio roller rockers, heads setup so it can accept 1.6 so i can play with split ratio rockers.
• Kodiak marine Vortec intake for raw water cooling. I got this used, someone said it has a bronze liner in the cooling passage, some say they are hard anodized. I am unsure, it could be a bronze liner as the cooling passage looks different, but i don't wanna dig at it to see in case its anodized.
• older 350 block casting, punched .030.
• thunderbolt ignition
• original quadrajet
• reuse the manifolds if they pass a heated pressure test, otherwise most likely a set of GLM manifolds
• Shop built stainless long tail risers (my brother tig welds stainless pressure piping, I'm pretty sure we can build these) to prevent any reversion issues
• Eagle rotating assembly, 3.48 stroke, 7cc or 10cc inverted dome ( ) pistons, their house brand rods.
• Shooting for .040-.042 squish.
• Odds and ends: 7 quart pan with baffles (marine style dipstick in the block), windage tray, ARP main stud kit, melling pump (any recommendations? I'm leaning toward the M55HV with Moroso 24316 pickup for the deeper pan), brass freeze plugs and marine draincocks in the block, aluminum timing cover for thrust button on roller cam, aftermarket valve covers that clear the roller rockers and can be removed with the manifolds in place.

My first thoughts are my compression is a little high (9.5-9.7) but I generally only run 93 octane in the skis, so I will most likely only have this available with the boat. I initially wanted to go 383, but I would need better heads, and the Alpha would be living on even shorter borrowed time.

My goals:

• Reliable. I could build it way faster, but my daughter will be ready to do some water sport stuff in a couple of years, I want something that stays together. I would like for this engine to live five years minimum (unless I do something stupid like forget to winterize)
• Little more top end. I will be happy to get into the 60s, but I am not crying over this
• Solid power and fairly easy to handle, I can cope with a little finicky-ness but I don't want it to be impossible to handle around docks and the trailer due to excessive idle speed or other nastiness

Non-engine things I am doing:

• outdrive service (bellows, hoses, water pump, input shaft seal (had some oil in the bellows), universal joints)
• battery box work (duals because a dead battery sucks)
• remove the carpet, do another thorough inspection, seal and repair anything exposed in the hull and put down new gel coat with anti slip, convert to snap in carpet someday

All of this to ask for a sanity check. Is my plan and expectations reasonable? (also, i know this is offshoreonly and mine isnt)

Ayuh,.... I think yer cam choice might be alittle to hot, 'n can't understand why you'd use solid lifters,....

The Vortec heads, with matchin' inverted dome pistons, 'n tight quench, can run reliably, at, or very near 10:1, so long as the fuel, 'n fuel supply are reliable,....

I already have the solids. And I need conversion lifters because I want to use the older block casting because A) I have it ready to go and B) I don't have to round up a 1 piece rear main seal flywheel or run an adapter for the rear main seal (which i have had about 75/25 luck with). Honestly there is no other real reason to run them except that I got em.

Would the XM270 be more in line with building a 383 instead of the 350? I know the extra displacement will tame the cam down a bit. Since I haven't purchased the rotating assembly or cam yet, I could go that route. I do not plan on spinning this thing to the moon very often (if ever...) so the limitations of the vortec heads on top of the 383 shouldn't be a huge thing. I would prefer to run a lower cruise rpm/wot rpm.

Fuel and fuel supply should be stable, I am pretty finicky about making sure I keep everything top notch.

Any advice on putting thru hulls on this? I would like to be able to have the option of diverters. I have a couple of 4" 90 degree exhaust outlets from PWC that I could put in the "shelf" above the outdrive. I could do a couple down low on each side by the drive but I don't think I could keep the Y pipe and have diverters. I have a picture if anyone cares to see (cant post urls yet). The SX190 has a whole bunch of angles back there with a tunnel the drive sits up in.

I think for this season I will putting in a pretty much stock 350 so I can work out all the kinks.