'98 305 Mercruiser Thunderbolt, Alpha 1 Gen 2 outdrive. New to me in the Winter, didn't water test but bought from a friend. Had marina go thru the boat this Spring to ensure trouble free boating season. They tuned up, did all filters, fluids, etc then called as they had a miss/hesitation post tune up and recommended rebuilding the carb. I said OK and they said it ran better post rebuild. Picked up boat and haven't been happy with performance as it wouldn't jump on plane and could only get 37MPH GPS at 4k RPM with a light load of passengers and 1/2 tank of gas. I was assuming I needed to reprop down from 14.5 x 19P and have spent lots of time researching 4 v. 5 blade, stainless etc.
Finally someone convinced me its a power not a prop issue so I started digging and tonight found the tech had reversed plug wires #2 and #8 on the starboard cylinder bank. Flipped them back and it runs like a dream now....pulls hard up to 4900 rpm @ WOT, jumps on plane, its a completely different boat.
Question I have is what damage have I done to the boat running it hard at WOT on 6 cyls over the past two months while I try to convince myself its due to the boat being wide beam and full of people when we're out crusing, tubing, skiing, etc.
What should I look for? Should I replace the plugs on the two cyls that have been misfiring or shooting blanks for the past couple of months? Any potential valve or ring damage from firing the cyls out of sequence? Other than a low speed miss it really didn't run rough (or I'm a complete idiot) so I'm guessing the valves were open when the misfiring cyls fired so no real harm or risk of back-pressure blowing out a valve etc.
Let me know as I'm ready to flame the marina but not sure how angry I should be (its the only shop on the lake and I use them for gas, bait, etc all the time).
Thx.
Finally someone convinced me its a power not a prop issue so I started digging and tonight found the tech had reversed plug wires #2 and #8 on the starboard cylinder bank. Flipped them back and it runs like a dream now....pulls hard up to 4900 rpm @ WOT, jumps on plane, its a completely different boat.
Question I have is what damage have I done to the boat running it hard at WOT on 6 cyls over the past two months while I try to convince myself its due to the boat being wide beam and full of people when we're out crusing, tubing, skiing, etc.
What should I look for? Should I replace the plugs on the two cyls that have been misfiring or shooting blanks for the past couple of months? Any potential valve or ring damage from firing the cyls out of sequence? Other than a low speed miss it really didn't run rough (or I'm a complete idiot) so I'm guessing the valves were open when the misfiring cyls fired so no real harm or risk of back-pressure blowing out a valve etc.
Let me know as I'm ready to flame the marina but not sure how angry I should be (its the only shop on the lake and I use them for gas, bait, etc all the time).
Thx.