Will a tower of power run on its side?

[Suprathepeg]

I'm thinking of building a small inboard boat and was thinking it would be cool to use the power head of an older merc 115 to power it. I would need to lay the motor in the boat on the crank side of the block in order to get the correct drive angle. Would i need to fab up a custom intake for this or would it run fine with a different laying on its back?

 

[Chinewalker]

It's been done. Carbs would need to be rotated so the floats still float. You would also need to close up the cooling system as the outboard version simply dumps it into the exhaust. A water pump would be needed, too.

If you google search the "H Bomb" 750cc racing car, you should come up with a 4-cylinder that was run horizontally. Not sure what there would be as far as tech stuff, but you might find something...

 

[Faztbullet]

Yes it will work as in the 80's I saw pic's of 2 custom go-karts with 115hp for power . They ran at Daytona at over 130mph and was somehow linked to "Ole Man" Roy a Merc tech rep as he showed me the pictures. Also OMC had a 90hp V-4 sterndrive in 1968....

 

[Texasmark]

Yes it will work as in the 80's I saw pic's of 2 custom go-karts with 115hp for power . They ran at Daytona at over 130mph and was somehow linked to "Ole Man" Roy a Merc tech rep as he showed me the pictures. Also OMC had a 90hp V-4 sterndrive in 1968....

The 90v 4 was from their '65 outboard engine lineup and they ran it in the Evinrude Playmate gull wing I/O from '66 thru '68 then dropped it and only marketed their 2 models of 4 strokers, one being an inline 110 as I recall (like Mercruiser ran at the time) and the other a little Buick 155 V8 or V6, 150 hp or somewhere around there. That may give you a time line for looking up the parts list for that sterndrive and finding out just how they handled the carb, intake manifold, and carb type. As I recall the engine was horizontal with the intake on the bottom, spark plugs on the top as you could see them when the rear deck covering was lifted. Possibly a google of the '66 thru '68 Evinrude Playmate may get you what you might want.

Edit. I just did you homework: The guy posting in this site has a parts list and maybe other things for the 90 hp Playmate:

www.omc-boats.org/archive/2008/05/2827.html

Seems Johnson starter earler in 1964 with a similar rig.

Oops couldn't break from green color....anyway,

Seems you could make a couple of adapter plates and gaskets, one (3) for the carbs, 4 holes 90 degrees apart, 2 new holes for the carb mounting bolts/new studs and two holes for mounting the adapter to the old studs in the block, with appropriate gaskets.

The bottom end could also have an adapter plate for water in/out and some kind of exhaust adapter eventually to a muffler.

The linkage would be the tricky part as the engine is probably like a lot of Mercs with timing slightly BTDC at idle to roughly 20 degrees BTDC at WOT. So you would have to handle that and butter fly opening operations.

But it might be fun if you have the resources.