Grab a cold brew or coffee which ever is appropriate..........this is lengthy. :confused1
Went boat camping 2 weekends ago up to Stehekin which is the head of the lake at our glacier fed lake called Lake Chelan. This is our first lengthy boat trip.
http://www.cometothelake.com/uplake_index.html
No roads........only way in or out is by boat or sea plane. Its about an hour 1 way. Got to the head of the lake and looked at fuel gauges. They both showed 1/2 tank. :shocked: WTF??? I just left with 90gal. (full) and according to my gauges I only have 45???? How the he!! am I going to get back to the trailer? They have fuel at the docks but only 87. After contemplating I do what I now know what to never ever do again. I put 15gal in each tank and back the timing off a couple of degrees. My timing is locked out at 32. I back her down a bit and try to get on plane......pinging like a mother but hoping once on plane she will not be under load anymore and limp her home. No go! 5 seconds in to trying to get on plane I back out of it because she's not rolling over.......even with the wife sitting on the bow only to get her to roll over mind you. Bump timing back to where it was originally and she rolls right over but with lots of pinging. Once rolled over the pinging quit and we where on our way back to the trailer. 2-3 foot rollers the whole way back with lots of wind. We pull up to the docks and she wont idle. Docks are spaced closely with narrow isle way. Boat keeps stalling and hard starting. Just get it started in time not to drift in to the dock or worse........ parked boats. Finally get her on the trailer and transom is black as coal. I already have suspicions that I may have a serious problem. Never the less we head home after 3 days of tent camping with the family.......first camping trip for my 3 yr. old son. Get boat home and immediately pull spark plugs. Very sooty but no electrode or porcelain damage or aluminum on porcelain. Im thinking at this point I should count my blessing cause I just cheated the HP Gods by blending fuel on a 13:1 compression engine. I proceed to empty the tanks. 10-15 gallons is all that was left.........pretty good economy huh???? :dead: Refill with straight Av-Gas at the tune of $320. Clean her up, stuff new spark plugs in and head out the next weekend to our local river which is the Columbia River. I also just finished installing a thermostatic controlled oil system and restricted water to the block with the Merc relief bypass valve in hopes to build more engine heat. System seems to be working but not optimum yet. Oil temp 143F and water 123F. Anyway had a good day out on the river.....mostly clean/polishing at the sand bar and headed back to the trailer. I roll in to the throttle a bit and the wife starts taping out.......WTF???? We arnt even going very fast???? She says we are smoking as she points to the hatch. I stop and lift the hatch and she's puffing like a freight train out the valve cover breather. AHHHHH $h!t.....Excessive crankcase pressure. First thoughts are I just fubared a $35K engine!!! Shut her down. Pull dip stick. No milkshake........Well thats a plus. Start it up again........She fires right off and sounds fine........no noises.....bangs....clunks or anything but wont plain......and is shooting ducks under load........maybe broken spring??? I limped her back to the trailer and the transom is black again but not too bad. Get her home and do a compression test with leak down. #5 is dead.....zero-zip........nada.......and #7 only had 90psi which is far from all the others at 230-235psi. I figured broken ring or hole in the piston on 5. Did leak down on 7 and found that leaking out the exhaust. "Burnt exhaust valve".......Pull the head hoping for the best........found blow torched piston with a whole in the dome. Pulled both heads and took to the machine shop. Cylinders are all fine. Machine shop found 4 or 5 broken springs as well on top of everything. Asked them to look the Dart Pro 1's over thoroughly and clean them up as need be as it looked like I have had some water reversion. Got Cstraub on the horn with a shopping list. He red labels everything for next day. (THANKS C'MAN)Ended up ordering 1 exhaust and 1 intake valve, springs, locks, Intake gskts, pan gskt, head gskt. and a piston(my bad C'man I remember only asking for 1 head gskt now) :dead: Figured my local parts house could have me one in another day........go back down to order it and machine shop says bad news on the heads. :dead: Water reversion has pitted the valve seats enough that my machine shop dosnt feel comfortable cleaning them up and also said they have never seen that type of profile cut into the heads. PERFECT.......now I have to send them back to Lingenfelter. :dead: Done for the year..... :unhappy1: Nope remembered I got a set of Merlin 345/119 VR Grumpy Jenkins back home on the bench which are the same cc chambers. Call Cstraub ask if they will work with my configuration.......he gives me thumbs up and we are back on track. Instruct the machine shop to put new springs on my Merlins so I can go boating as our season is at its end. Order the other head gskt. Parts house says......Be here tomorrow. Back to piston. I pulled the bad one and a neighbor so it can be balanced. When I ordered the new piston I had all part #'s from build sheet at Lingenfelters' so I thought I was golden. WRONG.
As we are getting ready to balance piston we notice the new piston is .......8grms to light. WTF??? New piston is 8g light.........????? I would of thought it to be heavy. Call JE up and explain what I had. JE decides the fix is a heavy wrist pin which will get us 3g heavy and then we can lighten the wrist pin to match the other 7 pistons. New wrist pin be here the following day. So new wrist pin shows up and so does the other head gskt...........get her balanced and go home to reassemble..........just remembered I start night shift that night and its a friday. :dead: No reassemble on friday and now is sat..........get bottom end buttoned up and get ready to put heads on......WTF????? my local parts house that special ordered the one head gskt. transposed 2 important numbers. :shocked: :dead: :dead: :dead: Luckily I noticed it before opening but nevertheless nothing for the weekend now. Ordered the new one from Summit Racing and be here tomorrow so as the world turns getting closer.........stuck at work tonight but looking forward to UPS delivery so I can get this thing back in the boat for the big weekend. :bigsmile: I have many pics throughout this process but may take me a few days to post them. I used Donmans post from his 502 swap which was helpful on outdrive removal. Many THANKS too Donman, CFM, and Cstraub. Watch for pics.
The culprit.
Went boat camping 2 weekends ago up to Stehekin which is the head of the lake at our glacier fed lake called Lake Chelan. This is our first lengthy boat trip.
http://www.cometothelake.com/uplake_index.html
No roads........only way in or out is by boat or sea plane. Its about an hour 1 way. Got to the head of the lake and looked at fuel gauges. They both showed 1/2 tank. :shocked: WTF??? I just left with 90gal. (full) and according to my gauges I only have 45???? How the he!! am I going to get back to the trailer? They have fuel at the docks but only 87. After contemplating I do what I now know what to never ever do again. I put 15gal in each tank and back the timing off a couple of degrees. My timing is locked out at 32. I back her down a bit and try to get on plane......pinging like a mother but hoping once on plane she will not be under load anymore and limp her home. No go! 5 seconds in to trying to get on plane I back out of it because she's not rolling over.......even with the wife sitting on the bow only to get her to roll over mind you. Bump timing back to where it was originally and she rolls right over but with lots of pinging. Once rolled over the pinging quit and we where on our way back to the trailer. 2-3 foot rollers the whole way back with lots of wind. We pull up to the docks and she wont idle. Docks are spaced closely with narrow isle way. Boat keeps stalling and hard starting. Just get it started in time not to drift in to the dock or worse........ parked boats. Finally get her on the trailer and transom is black as coal. I already have suspicions that I may have a serious problem. Never the less we head home after 3 days of tent camping with the family.......first camping trip for my 3 yr. old son. Get boat home and immediately pull spark plugs. Very sooty but no electrode or porcelain damage or aluminum on porcelain. Im thinking at this point I should count my blessing cause I just cheated the HP Gods by blending fuel on a 13:1 compression engine. I proceed to empty the tanks. 10-15 gallons is all that was left.........pretty good economy huh???? :dead: Refill with straight Av-Gas at the tune of $320. Clean her up, stuff new spark plugs in and head out the next weekend to our local river which is the Columbia River. I also just finished installing a thermostatic controlled oil system and restricted water to the block with the Merc relief bypass valve in hopes to build more engine heat. System seems to be working but not optimum yet. Oil temp 143F and water 123F. Anyway had a good day out on the river.....mostly clean/polishing at the sand bar and headed back to the trailer. I roll in to the throttle a bit and the wife starts taping out.......WTF???? We arnt even going very fast???? She says we are smoking as she points to the hatch. I stop and lift the hatch and she's puffing like a freight train out the valve cover breather. AHHHHH $h!t.....Excessive crankcase pressure. First thoughts are I just fubared a $35K engine!!! Shut her down. Pull dip stick. No milkshake........Well thats a plus. Start it up again........She fires right off and sounds fine........no noises.....bangs....clunks or anything but wont plain......and is shooting ducks under load........maybe broken spring??? I limped her back to the trailer and the transom is black again but not too bad. Get her home and do a compression test with leak down. #5 is dead.....zero-zip........nada.......and #7 only had 90psi which is far from all the others at 230-235psi. I figured broken ring or hole in the piston on 5. Did leak down on 7 and found that leaking out the exhaust. "Burnt exhaust valve".......Pull the head hoping for the best........found blow torched piston with a whole in the dome. Pulled both heads and took to the machine shop. Cylinders are all fine. Machine shop found 4 or 5 broken springs as well on top of everything. Asked them to look the Dart Pro 1's over thoroughly and clean them up as need be as it looked like I have had some water reversion. Got Cstraub on the horn with a shopping list. He red labels everything for next day. (THANKS C'MAN)Ended up ordering 1 exhaust and 1 intake valve, springs, locks, Intake gskts, pan gskt, head gskt. and a piston(my bad C'man I remember only asking for 1 head gskt now) :dead: Figured my local parts house could have me one in another day........go back down to order it and machine shop says bad news on the heads. :dead: Water reversion has pitted the valve seats enough that my machine shop dosnt feel comfortable cleaning them up and also said they have never seen that type of profile cut into the heads. PERFECT.......now I have to send them back to Lingenfelter. :dead: Done for the year..... :unhappy1: Nope remembered I got a set of Merlin 345/119 VR Grumpy Jenkins back home on the bench which are the same cc chambers. Call Cstraub ask if they will work with my configuration.......he gives me thumbs up and we are back on track. Instruct the machine shop to put new springs on my Merlins so I can go boating as our season is at its end. Order the other head gskt. Parts house says......Be here tomorrow. Back to piston. I pulled the bad one and a neighbor so it can be balanced. When I ordered the new piston I had all part #'s from build sheet at Lingenfelters' so I thought I was golden. WRONG.
As we are getting ready to balance piston we notice the new piston is .......8grms to light. WTF??? New piston is 8g light.........????? I would of thought it to be heavy. Call JE up and explain what I had. JE decides the fix is a heavy wrist pin which will get us 3g heavy and then we can lighten the wrist pin to match the other 7 pistons. New wrist pin be here the following day. So new wrist pin shows up and so does the other head gskt...........get her balanced and go home to reassemble..........just remembered I start night shift that night and its a friday. :dead: No reassemble on friday and now is sat..........get bottom end buttoned up and get ready to put heads on......WTF????? my local parts house that special ordered the one head gskt. transposed 2 important numbers. :shocked: :dead: :dead: :dead: Luckily I noticed it before opening but nevertheless nothing for the weekend now. Ordered the new one from Summit Racing and be here tomorrow so as the world turns getting closer.........stuck at work tonight but looking forward to UPS delivery so I can get this thing back in the boat for the big weekend. :bigsmile: I have many pics throughout this process but may take me a few days to post them. I used Donmans post from his 502 swap which was helpful on outdrive removal. Many THANKS too Donman, CFM, and Cstraub. Watch for pics.The culprit.
