Reducing total weight of a Ford 302/888 I/O?

River_Lizard

Petty Officer 1st Class
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Jan 17, 2012
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378
Is there any way of reducing the overall weight of a '78 Merc 5.0 w/888 drive? Any chance of getting 200-300 lbs off it? Aluminum manifold? What about exhaust system.....any way of reducing that weight? The 888 has a SS prop which I could replace with an aluminum one. Anything else that might help? My target weight is around 750-795 lbs overall. Is this even possible?

Thanks for any input.
 

fishrdan

Admiral
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Jan 25, 2008
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Re: Reducing total weight of a Ford 302/888 I/O?

My target weight is around 750-795 lbs overall.

That's the weight of a 3.0L 4cyl Mercruiser and drive. I don't think you're going to be able to shave that much weight off a V8...
 

River_Lizard

Petty Officer 1st Class
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Jan 17, 2012
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378
Re: Reducing total weight of a Ford 302/888 I/O?

That's what I was afraid of. What's the weight of a 5.0 w/888 ? 1100 lbs?
 

matt167

Captain
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Sep 27, 2012
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Re: Reducing total weight of a Ford 302/888 I/O?

The 5.0L alone is 550ish. 1,100 is in the ballpark. You could go to Aluminum heads and intake to remove 150 lbs, but then you need to add in fresh water cooling to the engine which may or may not be available. If you boated in fresh water, then you could probably get away with just an aluminum intake because they are pretty cheep anyway.
 

River_Lizard

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jan 17, 2012
Messages
378
Re: Reducing total weight of a Ford 302/888 I/O?

Yeah, I was looking at aluminum heads and saw that they'd cut about 50 lbs. Figured the intake was good for at least 100 but that's still a far cry from the target weight. Well guess I'll keep looking for a 3.0 .
Thanks for both replies.
 
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