Little report
Still trying to get a few things worked out but on monday I dropped the boat in the water and it floats
Started up the engine and hit the water running. The boat jumped right up on plane but seemed a little lacking power, could only get 3600rpm and would hop pretty bad. The back of the hull has a 2" section hanging out from the transom so I pounded the outside 6" down a little ( helped a little but not enough). Took the boat home, went in to school and made some shims up, each one being 1/8" thick. Went home and put a jack under the front of the engine and lifted it up, then slide one shim in on each side ( should have used two, live and learn). Next I re-pitched the prop it was at 11 degrees so I took it down to 8 Degrees. Today weds. June 14th I asked one of my daughters to come out for a test run with me and away we went. Started with a solo run. It jumped right up on plane, got it up to 3600 rpm no hopping yet so I gave it a little more gas and made it up to 4000 rpm this time( more hopping). You could really feel the difference from monday. I went back and picked up my daughter, I was surprised at how well it got up on plane and drove. We went for a 15min ride and came back to the landing, while idling back at the landing I noticed the oil pressure had gone down to 25 ( it was at 65 to 70 while running) so I shut down. I checked the oil it was fine, water temp. never got over 185 the whole time we were out. We are running straight 30 wt for break-in, can 30 wt thin down enough for the oil to drop that much pressure from 65 to to 25 at idle after it is warmed up? I looked down in the bottom of the boat and saw a bolt, looked everywhere ten mins. later found it was a bolt that held the solenoid to the starter. Checked the prop and found two small scratches in the metal guard strip on our warp drive prop. Man this could have been a lot worse.
Right now I'm just getting these things ironed out before I can have kids take a crack at it.
At this time, I'm thinking that the only way to get more out of this engine is to go to a two barrel carb instead of the single barrel carb that we have in it right now. We will have to get more air going though the carb to get more rpm ( our reduction is a 2.1 to 1 ratio and we should be able to turn 5000 RPM's). We can do that this next fall, as for oil should we be running 20-50wt any ideas??????