Well this projects been a long one that's for sure... I figured i would have had this thing finished and running a few years ago. I finally got the motor in, fired it up, and took it out the weekend after the 4th. It ran great, definitely faster than it ever was when i was a kid. I had my dad launch me and i decided to let him park the truck and come back before i actually took the first cruise. He's been helping me with it here and there during this project and i knew he really wanted to go. Him, 2 of my buddies and I get in, start it up and take it for a cruise. I immediately noticed that it cruised at a lot lower RPM. As a kid we normally cruised at around 3500 rpm +/- a few hundred. I was cruisin alittle under 3K. After running it for about up river for a bit when i came across a smooth area i decided to nail the throttle... Holly shit was i not expecting it to pull has hard as it did. Now i don't have much to compare to because most of the boats I've been in had pretty much stock motors, maybe a cam or whatever... anyway, i look over at my dad and he has a huge smile on his face, i look back and my buddy's, they have a hollyshit/scared look on there face but are at least smiling... The back seat kinda did a wheelie i guess, never had that problem before So we cruise some more and then i slow down and ask my dad if he wants to drive. Of course he does, so he gets in the drivers seat and cruises for a bit, nails the throttle a few times and hands the boat back over to me... All in all it was a awesome first voyage. My dad is really impressed with the boat and all the work I've done to it. He keeps telling me it's never been this nice. It's really a nice feeling when something you work on comes out as you hoped. I was really scared that something was going to go wrong being this was pretty much my first motor build.
I want to thank everybody here who helped me on this project, especially the following guys...
Bob (Fiat48), You have put up with question after question after question and have always given me detailed answers and never seamed to get annoyed... even with the huge amount of basic questions i would ask!
Art (GoFastRacer), Same goes for you, no matter what i asked i always got a detailed answer from you and then more. If/When you decide to make a trip to redrock (now sandbar resort) let me know and I'll come out, beers are on me!
Chris (cstraub69), You've also put up with my questions, not only that but you gave me great deals on the stuff I've bought from you. The boat runs awesome and pulls hard throughout rpm range. I will tell you anybody building there own motor needing parts, especially a cam, I'm giving them your info!
Scott (SteelComp), your another one, helped me a lot of with timing chain issues and with trying to figure out rocker geometry. Not only that but your thread with your build helped me a lot too, i cant even tell you how many times I've looked at that thread. Sad this now is that for some reason the pictures on that thread are gone.
Well, like i said, I'm super happy with how things have turned out so far. It was a great feeling when people came up asking who built my motor and me being able to tell them I did, i just cant get that type of satisfaction from having a shop build it for me and that was the main reason i choose to do it myself.
The video isn't very long, unfortunelly i didn't get much video. My mom tried to take a video while i was making a pass but she's bouncing all over the place. The next outing I'll have a better video for sure. In this video I'm just running it on the trailer setting the idle and timing.
http://unix-scripts.com/hb/uploads/shaunboat1.wmv