It’s really alive again! After losing the engine block and water jacket on the exhaust manifold in our Bayliner to a snap freeze two years ago last April… wooo was I pissed, the weather turned beautiful for two weeks, so hooked her up to the water and did my annual tune up. That weekend it dropped to 20F on us and froze everything solid. When I found out the machine shops wanted $6,000+ for a short block…. and $8,000 for a long block to replace it, add in another $500 since my ‘core’ was dead, I just about did flips. Called several places around they were all about the same price… For a lousy Ford 4 banger, they are nuts, worse I had no idea that OMC folded up years ago, they made the stern drive.

Yeah I know there are supposed to be some differences between the automotive and marine engines, but not much. Found an ‘89 Ranger pickup that had the same 2.3L engine, separated it from the truck, tossing all of the electronics and fuel injection stuff in the scrap pile. Blocks and the heads were cast identically, the rest I was able to salvage from the original marine engine. A few weekends and a lot of cussing and bleeding later, I had to manufacture almost every gasket by hand to mate the marine parts.

Shorten this up a bit, finally got my tail in gear and put the key to her this morning for the first time to see how badly I messed up the build. I almost fell overboard (into the driveway) when she jumped to life… I had only guessed on the timing and everything during the build I’d guesstimated to within 3 degrees on the timing . The victory was short lived when I hauled her to the lake, it ran but really rough under load. Hauled her back home to see what could have gone wrong, of course I find it was just a stupid thing that could have been fixed while at the lake, of the dozens of wires and everything that could have (insert should have) gone wrong, I somehow managed to cross two spark plug wires… DUH!

Back out to the lake we go, and zoooooommmmmm… She’s alive and kicking :) Much more responsive than the old engine was, rebuilt the carburetor too. Jumps right up on plane in seconds and does she haul the mail! Figured if it was going to break I was gonna break it today, so I really pounded on her… top speed was over 42mph (up from 35) but there was still a bit of throttle left, but was pushing above 5000rpm where the onboard tachometer runs out, so I let her cruise there for a few miles….

Needless to say I’m very pleased…. our girl is back!