1)  1/4 turn is fine, its mostly for safety- In case a hose blows apart or off @ the lake, the boat could sink, hence the valve.

2) Water temps running 120* to 140* are fine on an open cooling system (or 40-50* above lake temp) Oil temp is more important, and should run 180*+, enough to 'burn off' moisture.

3) Panthers are low pressure pumps, and should be fine without a regulator. If it is a bypass regulator, make sure the bypass is dumped overboard.

4) Ball valve is for draining the block, I do in the winter for freezing, If it doesn't freeze where you are at, prolly flush the sand out once or twice a year.

5) This could be a previous exhaust leak, or rust weeping from higher up, hard to tell, If it doesn't leak, it's good to go...

That what I see in the pics

Dan'l

All right, need some help. First here's what I thought was a relief regulator, but it looks like a valve? Has thread on the exposed part of the T

Second, I ran the boat on the hose to warm it up. Pulled the end off the nifty oil hose attached to the bottom of the pain to drain the oil and nothing but a tiny trickle came out.

Hours later maybe a quart has drained. What the hell am I missing? There's no valve on this line! It's a straight shot from where the drain plug would be to outside the boat. I even jacked up the trailer to lower the drain plug side and nothing!

I want to get out on the lake this weekend, so it looks like I'm going to suck the oil through the dipstick with a pump. Hope that works.

hose is plugged with crud?


it looks like you're at the point in your "build" where you need to stop trusting that WHATEVER the previous owner did "works" and go through the whole boat to make sure its a) safe and b) wont hurt anything.  Tossing 4 quarts of oil into a motor thats already full and then trying to run it is only going to have bad results...  id suggest ditching whatever valves those are, going to autozone and getting yourself some new hose and some hoseclamps and just replacing whats there so that you know the water lines are in good working order.  for all you know they're 10 years old, you'll go out on the lake and have a giant 1/2" hose leak because one blew.  running on the pump and the hose are 2 TOTALY different animals. 

Agreed. I do need to go through hoses and wires. Most everything is new from what I've found.

I didn't run the engine, not will I until I suck the extra oil out. I just wanted to make sure that the pan wasn't too low to drain even though the dipstick mark was ok.

There is probably is crap in that hose. Guess I can remove it and see what dumps out the pan.

get yourself a gate valve from home depot and just run it wide open.  if for some reason you need more heat (after preheating thru logs you'll have plenty) you can close it a little bit but i doubt it.  its mostly there so if you do have a leak you can shut off the supply.  theres also a little 1' section from the rear housing to a copper tube that passes thru the transom thats pretty fun to replace as well. 

Here's the end of the oil drain hose. Removed this cap and only a drip came out. I even dumped 4 quarts of oil bringing it above the full mark in the dipstick and still nothing poured out this hose. It's connected directly to the pan then out the drain hole on the transom. Pans higher that the bottom of the hose. Why isn't it draining?

The oil hose may take a while to drain, I let mine drain for 24 hrs, F'n cold oil Big Bear in December took 2 days...
A merc suction pump should work fine.

Dan'l

Beer time 

So I got all the oil sucked out and replaced with new oil and filter.

Ran a compression test and its 148 on 3,7, and 8 and 150 on the rest.

Changed the name of the thread and will use this to keep track of changes to the boat.

In the first post I showed a burnt exhaust flange, will it wasn't the exhaust! It's the valve cover leaking a good amount of oil. There's a fine mist of oil on that side of the engine and a stream that leads right onto that part of the exhaust. Sure explains the missing oil, burnt oil smell, and burn mark  . All of the ARP bolts were loose on the valve cover, so I gave them a 1/2 turn tighter.

Need to find the torque specs and make sure they're right.

Also picked up gate valve and some other plumbing things. As I was staring at the gate valves I realized what my second inline image is: It's a gate valve without the red handle! 

So the original plumbing was 1/2" 1/4 turn bibb valve to 1/2" gate valve (missing handle and lying in the bilge) to T and through the engine.

I'll pull the existing gate valve and see what position it's in. No need to run two.

Had an interesting one at the lake this last weekend. Boat started great on the trailer, and then again in the water at the launch. Idled out into the no wake zone and then it coughed, died, and would not restart  . Managed to get it turned back towards the docks and tied up while trying to crank and start.

Definitely fuel related. It would crank, cough, die, crank run for 3-4 seconds and then die. This pattern repeated for about an hour with wait time in between to cool the starter and let out a string of profanities.

Finally as the batteries were dying and I was throwing in the towel, the damn thing started and idled great!  Tied it to the dock and just watched it idle it's merry little head off for a few minutes and then decided to brave the no wake zone. We purred on out the no wake, got past the buoys, hit the gas and had a great rest of the day.

Fuel pressure the entire time was 5.5 - 6.5 on the gauge although it's not liquid filled and does shake a bit.

Good news is the water temp is better with the new plumbing. 130-140 under way and max 180 at idle.

Also made friends with a couple of the sheriffs. They were pretty cool when we tied up to their dock, the closest one after the stall in the no wake. We had some banter back and forth both at the dock and on the water after we got up and running; they were glad we were able to salvage the day.

Good to hear is runnin good
Idle thing is a preference thing too, I have my bbc @ 900-1000 r's, works good around the docks, (its a heavy azz 21' barge), and reverse kinda works at that rpm (ride plate really renders reverse useless...) A good tune on the motor, and you won't need a choke, My bbc would start with a foot of snow on the bow, @ 7,000 ft, and idle, with out a choke...but was tuned for the river (~510')

I think another panther here, BBC powered, had similar numbers...   

Dan'l

Here are some pictures. Mothing that really shows the hatch too well.

We were out today and had a great time.

Decided to do some winter maintenance. The fuel fills don't sit flush and you can tell these ones replace the rectangular pop up ones. Whoever put these in did a crap job, but that's not the issue right now. Right now, the fuel fill hose doesn't connect.

The aftermarket fuel fill has a 1.5" diameter pipe and the tank has a 2" fuel neck. The fuel fill pipe is too long and actually sits inside the fuel neck .



It looks like the PO used some random hose with a 1.5" ID connected to the fuel fill and stuffed the 1.75" OD of that hose into USCG 2" fill hose clamped to the tank. Unfortunately this let loose and the fuel fill actually popped out.





Any suggestions on how to make this correct and safe? Do I order original style 2" pop up fuel fill? I don't know that those would be shallow enough because the neck of the aluminum tank may be taller than the original fiberglass tank.




Also, the tank has a flange welded to it. However, as I found out just now, the tank isn't strapped down at all. It nests into the bottom of the old fiberglass tank and the flange wedges it in there. Yet, if I tilt it away from the hull, I can slide it forward a good foot  . Not sure how to fix that either.



Trucks I'm good with; Boats that have been ghetto rigged and fiberglass.... not so much.