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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by backfoot100 on October 02, 2019, 06:23:27 AM »

No I used the stock outlet. Just put new exhaust tips on it.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/EYTTp82ukGCisJLe9

Reworking stock heads is a waste of time IMO. Stock heads are horrid for anything remotely performance oriented. Vortec heads are the Chevy equivalent of GT40P heads for a Ford. You'll get noticeably increased performance and HP. The only downside as you stated is you need a new intake and valve covers. The intake is a wash as its normally included in any head upgrade over the factory cast iron unit. The valve covers are cheap.

I know its not cheap but you'll never wrong with a quality set of aftermarket heads. By the time you factor in reworking a set a factory heads and putting new vavles and seals in the cost is pretty much a wash and you can literally take them out of a box and bolt them on.

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by Andrew on September 30, 2019, 08:42:52 PM »

Did you raise your exhaust above the stock ‘below the waterline’ location? If so, any pictures?

I was kicking around three ideas for this motor - Stroke it, convert to roller cam, swap to vortec heads and intake. Perhaps one, two, or all three of these.  But real goal was just new rings, bearings, valve job.

For the sake of keeping the rebuild cheap, Stroker is not going to happen. And roller cam is not going to happen. I went with the cam a little over stock (212/218 - lifts under 500.). Compcams told us either of the two I was considering would not take an inch lb of torque off my bottom end.

 I haven’t made final decision on heads yet. I can  get mine redone ( need different springs for this cam, probably some porting while they are at it) for about 350. Or my machine shop can set me up with some stock vortecs worked appropriately for about 500. Plus another 200 or so for new intake manifold. Going to the Carlisle swap meet this week, maybe I’ll find cheaper head option, but probably not.

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by backfoot100 on September 26, 2019, 06:33:29 AM »

Seeing as you're tearing it down anyway then I agree that a cam couldn't hurt. I think either one your contemplating would work fine. Neither one is radical by any means but going any bigger starts to push the torque curve higher up the RPM scale and you'll start losing your bottom end. Talk with a cam vendor to get help on which one. You have to be a little careful about water inversion when talking marine cams too. I put a Comp marine cam in my stroker and am very happy with it but its also a roller and not a flat tappet.

@Andrew
I have a stock aluminum logs with 4" SS tubes straight out the back, no mufflers.

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by Andrew on September 22, 2019, 11:00:49 PM »

What are you doing for exhaust on your stroker?

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by Andrew on September 22, 2019, 10:58:15 PM »

I’m not doing the rebuild just for the cam - I bought this motor , used, and ran it in another’s boat for last 12 years. It’s always run well for me, but there has always been a lot of ‘blowby’ smoke coming up through the valve covers and routed back to the flame arrester. Never bothered me so much when the motor was 10+ feet behind me in an engine room.  But in this boat it’s more of a problem, when I get off the boat, I have the smell of burning oil exhaust. 

So while I’m got it torn down for new rings and bearings, doesn’t make much sense to reuse the 25 year old cam. I believe my 350 mag is rated at 300 hp.

My machine shop guy is a boater, and seems to know what he’s talking about. I told him i want to boost low rpm torque, don’t really care much about max rpm or speed. Told him I was thinking about replacing the crank to make it a stroker, upgrading to vortec heads, or perhaps both.  The vortec heads is a good upgrade, but I would have to replace my intake. So far both the local machine shop and speed shop have told me not to dump my intake, which is a cast version of the z28 gm intake; supposedly it’s a good one. He told me the stoker upgrade is a nice one, but really pays off in the top end. So probably not a great choice.  He said my best bet is to up my cam a bit, and gave me the name of a guy who will tune my carb to match  the motor. But he didn’t have any specifics yet on the cam. And he was more used to building ‘go fast’ motors with performance exhaust.

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Re: Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by backfoot100 on September 21, 2019, 01:32:13 PM »

Marine cams are mild as far as cams go.
Not sure how much you'll gain with just a cam. Seems like a lot of work for very little reward.
Is the factory intake cast or aluminum? What HP is it
rated at? 260? 285? 300?

An internal combustion engine is an air pump. The bottlenecks are carb, intake, head and then exhaust. You increase the airflow at one point and its only as good as the next bottleneck. As a general rule these engines in stock form have crap intakes and heads.  I really don't know what a cam will do for you with the crap heads. My personal opinion is put new intake and heads before a cam but thats just me. I put heads and intake on a bone stock 351 that bumped it at least 30-40 HP and never touched the cam. That was in a buddies 80 Correct Craft. It was a smokin 53MPH barefoot boat after that.

The QJ carb is good to 750CFM. The factory does a good job of setting them for a specific engine and application. At least in the automotive world. As long as you keep the engine pretty much stock the QJ is fine. Modify the engine and any QJ carb adjustments are a PIA.

I built a 400 HP stroker for my barefoot Advance and it runs strong so the hull and tranny will handle anything you want.

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Engine Repair/Maintenance - All Ski Boats / Anybody have a favorite cam for an Advance?

« Last post by Andrew on September 20, 2019, 12:32:00 PM »

90% sure I’m going to rebuild the motor this year in my Advance. It’s got a 94 Mercruiser 350 ‘mag’ motor in there now. I’m not going to go crazy on this thing, but would like to get a bit more torque on the low end. Don’t really care about anything over 4,000 rpm.

I’ve got a quadrajet, with the ‘mag’ intake, essentially the high rise Chevy z-28 manifold. The guy at my local ‘speed shop’ ( surprisingly there is still one left in my town) tells me I should stick with the intake I have - so guess I will. It’s a pre-vortec motor, so while I’m sure I could pick up some torque by converting to vortec heads and intake - more $$$ than I want to spend.

The oem cam for this motor is pretty mild, 200 / 212 duration, 400 / 410 lifts.

Thinking of going still mild with a 212/218 but might go up one more ( 218/224)  Curious if anyone has been down this path with this hull, and has any advice ? Thanks.

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Boat Maintenance - American Skier / Re: Random no power issue

« Last post by RonT on August 26, 2019, 10:18:03 AM »

Could be as simple as a loose battery cable at the engine, red or black cable.
1) When this happens is the battery charged or discharged?
2) If discharged (below 11 volts) and you know it was fully charged when last used, (big question mark here) then you have a voltage "leak"
3) if the battery is fully charged (12.5+) and the boats electrical system is "dead" then you will need to use a voltmeter to find where the "open" is
   
Because this is random it generally leads to a poor connection starting with battery cables and the multi pin plug at the rear of the engine where the engine harness meets the boat/dash harness. 
 

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Boat Maintenance - American Skier / Random no power issue

« Last post by Jstew on August 24, 2019, 10:00:56 AM »

I have a 1982 AM skier and have had an ongoing issue over the years, but hasn’t really happened in about 2 years until now. The boat will randomly not have any power. I charged the battery, had someone try to jump the battery on the lake, but nothing happened. I got the battery checked and the battery is good ( only a year old). I connected the battery yesterday and got power, started the boat and everything was fine. I disconnected it overnight so the perfect pass wouldn’t try to draw power from the battery. But this  morning, no power at all. And I know the battery is good. Anyone know how to resolve this issue? I don’t want to be out of the lake and randomly have no power? Could it be a short somewhere? How would I check that? What would cause the boat to not have any power with a good battery?

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Boat Maintenance - American Skier / Re: Batteries and starting

« Last post by stinegreg on August 17, 2019, 11:19:09 AM »

So I had a mechanic come out there and look at it, he said my starter is bad. Replaced the starter, he said it started right up but I was not there to witness it, I was at work.  So then my wife and I went out there last night to see if everything was working fine, turned the blower on, and turned the key, it started clicking real bad and then everything went dead, no blower, no radio, no lights.........ugh!!!!    but the batteries are fine, I called the mechanic back and he said it worked great for him but who knows, I told him I wasn't paying him until he fixes it right so now he is stumped on what it could be, gezzzzz.   Back to square one.