Looks good so far.   Keep the pics coming 

hope this helps

yeah bottom bracket coming from motor plate is adjustible has a slot

Oh and I know gonna have to do something about a remote oil filter

looks great i wish i was as far along asyou 

yeah i would half to agree with crew on this....skip says it so well about overcarbing a jetboat...you just cant do it...i would say 800-850....should be able to pick one up pretty cheap...and in my opinion go with mechanical secondaries...some will say vacuum secondaries, but i dont agree...plus they are ugly

Okay so I got the motor ready to fire.....I primed the oil pump and got everything hooked up. The problem I am having is with the starter! I checked the flywheel clearance and shimmed the starter, it is a new IMI HiTorque starter. I am getting a click from the ignition and the motor barely turned over an I get a couple more click sounds and cranking stops. Looking inside the bell housing the starter gear is stuck open against the flywheel. I can then push the gear back with very little effort anf it will pop back into place. Could this just be poor cranking power or is the starter pinion too close to the flywheel. There seems to be no adjustment for that. ANY IDEAS!?

I scanned back through the thread and didn't see much about the engine build.  Did you have it rebuilt or did you do it yourself?  Have you actually spun the engine over by hand?  It sounds like low cranking amps (weak battery, poor connections) or tight clearances somewhere.  Hope it's a battery issue.

Yea I tested the starter out of the motor and it works great and has tons of power. I had the engine rebuilt by somone, I can almost put my life on that it was done right, he has built motors for over 40 years and has built 6 motors for my pops with no problems, not saying he's not human and would never make a mistake you never know! It doesn't really crank over, it is like it wants to for a second and the harmonic balancer turns over like 30 degrees and the starter bendix tries to pop back from the flywheel. I have spun the motor over by hand, feels pretty hard to turn but still turns over which I believe is normal. As far as connections it is a new wiring harness and ignition switch which all seems to be right.

Is there a way I can just test the battery for the amps its putting out or maybe at the solonoid wire that goes to the power on the starter? And if so how much should I have to be sufficient. The battery is new too and is a Caterpiller deep cycle one.

If you don't have a battery load checker, one simple and only slightly adequate test would be to put a volt meter on the battery terminals while cranking, if it drops below say 10V I would say it is still possible for the battery to be bad, unless the cables are getting stupid hot, then I would suspect it's just overloaded...The Kragen Auto Parts here in town will load test a battery for free, that may help...

Do any cables start to heat up or anything?

Seems odd.

Okay took the battery in and had a load test...battery tested better than expected and is as good as new. As for the cables they are not getting hot and are 4 gauge. I will try to pull the plugs and see if that makes a difference tonight

Called IMI and it is a bottom mount starter...but I think I am an idiot and wired it wrong using a aux solonoid can anyone show me a diagram on how they are supposed to be wired I'm not the most knowledgable when it comes to anything thats not an import

So I have decided to take up a new career of continually chasing problems with this boat....I guess it could be worse. I finally got the starter working, then couldn;t get fuel come to find out pump is toast so I replaced that, now getting fuel to carb. Went to check for spark and no spark.

Here's what I have:

An HEI Ignition with an internal coil. The plugs, wires, wire harness and dizzy are all new. I think everything is new in the boat now that I just had to replace that damn fuel pump lol! So I have a new marine Ignition switch I got from dana marine. It is a 5 terminal switch with the following: "BAT" which I have the hot lead Red wire of the harness connected to. "GRD" which I have spliced into the gauge grounds(it did not have a ground wire in the new harness for the ignition switch for some reason). "ACC" which I have the purple ignition wires hooked up to which then continue to power the gauges down the line. Then there is the 5th terminal "MAG" which I have nothing hooked to.

Here's the problem:


When the key is in the "On" position but not full Start position I have 12 volts at the "BAT" lead, the "ACC" lead and the gauges are illuminated but when I go to full Hot start the voltage drops off and the gauges are no longer illuminated but the motor is turning over. I am also getting the same "no" voltage on the power at the dizzy when trying to start the motor but still a good 12v when just in the "On" position hense no spark at all!

WTF probably something simple just figuring out what it is 

Maybe that Trip by the mini mart on the way to buy the fuel pump  to buy more beer was a bad choice