I tore apart the olds because of lifter noise. When I got inside, everything looked great. It had .020 L2323 pistons, the bearings looked new, and it had been balanced. A couple of bores had some slight pitting in them but otherwise had no taper or wear. I honed them and installed new rings. I also installed a new oil pump and timing set. I used a 460 seal for the rear main. This engine has no oil mods, but I figured it lasted the previous owner 25 years with an A impeller, so it would last for me. The cam is an H-302-C Crane. I had to call Crane for the specs. The ones I remember are 232 duration with .496 lift on both intake & exhaust. The heads are KA with dual springs, but the rest is stock. The heads looked good so I left them as is. Intake is a O4B Edelbrock with an Edelbrock 750 1410 carb. The distributor is an Accel 301003 Dual Point that I converted to pointless with a Crane XR-I module. Timing is set at 30 degrees all in by 2200 rpm.
I rebuilt the pump because the impeller was badly pitted and had cracks. This gave me the opportunity to go to the A2 impeller. I chose this trim to keep the rpm's down at a safe level and give me a comfortable cruising speed. I get about 30 mph @ 2900 rpm. This is just out of the secondaries and seems to give pretty good economy.
The 61 mph was the GPS average of two passes. Indicated it showed 63-64. It was purposing a little on the top end with the trim tabs all the way up (I wanted to see how the boat handled without them). I adjusted them down a bit and the purposing went away, but the boat feels like the transom is being lifted a touch too much(it feels a little loose on the top end now). I'll keep playing with it until I find the sweet spot. Anyone have a place diverter they want to donate?
