Well after a long read-up on here and various other places. I have nearly decided to purchase a center mount turbo long block from Teds trucks and convert it over to marine to replace the tired and now broken 340 horse 454 in my 66 John Almand 23' offshore hardtop.
From what I can see and read these new optimizers are a very good engine now that they have gotten the bugs worked out.
Here is what I am debating.
Running it in N.A. form with a matching CUCV type injection pump which would put it around 170hp and 290 ft lbs? This would give me all the block/bearing upgrades WITH the piston oil cooler jets. You can never have enough cooling on a marine engine. For longevity and high sustained RPMs this is where its at.
Or
Converting it over to a procharger blown engine. Yes there is aftermarket marine turbo systems for this thing and they are super spendy and create a **** ton of heat and complicates the exhaust routing and on and on.
This would include lowering the compression via the use of those Cometic gaskets to around 18:1 or so so again I don't have to worry about long term RPMs.
Prochargers are awesome units. Good response good boost and little heat. I have even roughed out some ideas for a water to air intercooler to cool the charge as much as possible. I would need a separate heat exchanger though as running raw salt water through aluminum intercooler is bad news.
I live in the puget sound and with the wide open boating space we have the engines need to be setup for 80% throttle at a 100% duty cycle.
Add to this all of my diesels run off of WVO(waste vegetable oil)
and it would be awesome to have a boat to run around 25mph or better and not have to worry about over heating or fuel economy.
The boat weighs 4300 pnds worst case setup as I have described
Here's some pictures for ideas. She's a big boat. I basically was going for the smallest boat I could get with a real marine tranny yet while having a hardtop and being able to fit in my 40x30x16 shop on the trailer and truck. This setup clears with enough room to move around and work still with it secure and the truck parked.
Osco makes nice marine fresh water cooled exhaust manifolds so that's a non issue. Everything else from the Big block will bolt right on with minimal effort and what doesn't I can cut weld blast and paint so it does
i want to raise the hardtop about 24" or so so i have even more stand up room with new Diamond Sea Glaze windows and repaint/re gel the entire boat so it looks good/clean/new.... Its amazing how built this darn thing is. all fiberglass no wood in anything of water contact etc. in fact the only wood i found was part of the anchor locker lid. the rest of the boat seems to be fiberglass/foam core. its pretty impressive.
From what I can see and read these new optimizers are a very good engine now that they have gotten the bugs worked out.
Here is what I am debating.
Running it in N.A. form with a matching CUCV type injection pump which would put it around 170hp and 290 ft lbs? This would give me all the block/bearing upgrades WITH the piston oil cooler jets. You can never have enough cooling on a marine engine. For longevity and high sustained RPMs this is where its at.
Or
Converting it over to a procharger blown engine. Yes there is aftermarket marine turbo systems for this thing and they are super spendy and create a **** ton of heat and complicates the exhaust routing and on and on.
This would include lowering the compression via the use of those Cometic gaskets to around 18:1 or so so again I don't have to worry about long term RPMs.
Prochargers are awesome units. Good response good boost and little heat. I have even roughed out some ideas for a water to air intercooler to cool the charge as much as possible. I would need a separate heat exchanger though as running raw salt water through aluminum intercooler is bad news.
I live in the puget sound and with the wide open boating space we have the engines need to be setup for 80% throttle at a 100% duty cycle.
Add to this all of my diesels run off of WVO(waste vegetable oil)
and it would be awesome to have a boat to run around 25mph or better and not have to worry about over heating or fuel economy.
The boat weighs 4300 pnds worst case setup as I have described
Here's some pictures for ideas. She's a big boat. I basically was going for the smallest boat I could get with a real marine tranny yet while having a hardtop and being able to fit in my 40x30x16 shop on the trailer and truck. This setup clears with enough room to move around and work still with it secure and the truck parked.
Osco makes nice marine fresh water cooled exhaust manifolds so that's a non issue. Everything else from the Big block will bolt right on with minimal effort and what doesn't I can cut weld blast and paint so it does
i want to raise the hardtop about 24" or so so i have even more stand up room with new Diamond Sea Glaze windows and repaint/re gel the entire boat so it looks good/clean/new.... Its amazing how built this darn thing is. all fiberglass no wood in anything of water contact etc. in fact the only wood i found was part of the anchor locker lid. the rest of the boat seems to be fiberglass/foam core. its pretty impressive.
