thanks Flusher I appreciate the input, I'm going to start on it before work tomorrow, as far as the environmentalists, don't kid yourself if you aint pulling a kayak up to the lake behind a 3 cylinder hybrid your no true friend of the frogs. they hate all of us.

Thanks for the feedback, water temp runs about 150 on the lake.  I'll play with the water adjustment before I pull a manifold and psi check it to see if it's cracked, or restricted. my prob. is I can't see it being both manifolds, no misfire, no water in oil, good power. but if you load it up, smokes like a freight train. quick history, boat is stock bought it from orig. owner last year. ran, runs great. problem started end of last season, did some work on it, thought I had fixed it. nope,  isolated it to steam last weekend. thanks again.

hoping one of you guys has an idea, my 73 Tahiti with a 455 has steam out the exhaust both sides, first only under load, now at 1000 rpm and up no load, oil is clean, has to be the exhaust but I can't see both manifolds failing at the same time. what do you think?