I'm looking at buying a 42 Cigarette that has Merc 540ci Bulldog motors. They have 70 hrs on them.

I want to get to 900-950HP. Can these be built up, or would it be better to sell them and start fresh and build custom engines?

What would have to be done to the Bulldogs?

Can the Bulldog be made into a 900SC? What are the differences in the 900SC andd Bulldog??

i woudl say start fresh. You don;t know how they were run for 70 hours and do you really want to spend allthat $$$ on a pair of engien (parts labor and tuning) to eat one becasue you cheaped out and didn;t buy a new $2500 crank shaft??? 900hp is a serious HP monster start fresh so you know exactly what youa re dealing with. Seeign as that you can afford a 42' to buy and run and you want 900 hp you seem to have the cheese buy teh right thing once instead of teh wrong thing onc ethat has to be replaced withet right thing afterwards anyway.

I am pretty sure you could sell those bulldogs anyway. And recoup soem of teh lost bills. Or you could hang onto them and when you sell eth boat take you frsh huffer motors to your next hull and sell it witaht 70 hour bulldogs.

Ken if you need help figureing out what puder just typed drink a couple of shots then start to wave your hands in front of your face with the fingures spread out saying I will gift my top gun to Audio, I will gift my Top Gun to Audio

sorry bro- it's sold, but you were my back-up plan.

Hey Audio, I tryed the hand waving thing in front of my face like you said. It worked pretty good but I needed 4 shots. I do agree with what I think puder said. I'm pretty sure the Merc HP900SC still has only 540 cu. in. so you could feasably send the Bulldogs to one of the professionals and have them build them into 900's, but the question is how much of the 540's are gonna be good (strong) enough for 900HP. You'll be left with a box of parts you can't easily sell. If you start from scratch, you at least have some complete engines left over.

I remember reading a couple of years ago how Poker Runs America took the Bulldogs out of the magazine's 43 Scarab and sent them to Eickert. He rebuilt them after the company had put like a season's worth of hours on them. They dyno'd at something like 850-900hp and were very reliable. I believe the magazine, which still uses the boat, is still running those same engines.

Best bet? Call a few manufacturers and tell them what you have and what you want to do. You'll get a pretty clear indication based on the responses.

Thanks Miller - I have Pfaff doing just that. But maybe I'll call Eickert too and see if he remembers what they did.

It's either that or sell the whole package. The Bulldogs have Bravo drives (which I am also replacing with #6's), so I could sell it as a nice package (drives and engines) for maybe $18,000 per engine/drive combo? They only have 70 fresh water hours on them.

The Bulldog's should have a Mercruiser 12 quart cast oil pan, a Lunati 4-3/8" stroke crank, and a tall deck block you can keep. The iron heads should be replaced with aluminum, the flat tappet cam should be replaced with a roller, the rods, pistons, and ignition should be upgraded for blower use, then install an intercooler and the blower. My opinion is they would be worth more as an assembly sold complete, rather than starting with the parts. Sounds like a killer project.

Keith-Eickert used to have the article about the Bull Dog upgrade posted on his web site.

Here is the article
http://www.pokerrunsamerica.com/articles/full.html