Thanks Guys what a battle but I think we won, no splash this weekend as we still need to put the fuel tank back in and order a fuel pump. So here's the story so grab one of your favorite carbonated beverages ( I Did )and read along
According to Michigan Motorz to put the new style 3.0 liter( one piece rear main seal) in to a pre 1992 boat there are a few extra parts needed. 1. new 12.5"fly wheel, 2. new three bolt coupler, and 3. an adapter plate to attach the large port intake/exhaust manifold to the head, which by the moves the manifold almost 3/4inch to the ports side making the rubber exhaust tube a bear to line up.. No problem we ordered the required pieces and as posted we had them all installed on the motor by 10pm Friday night, all seemed to go well. I was up by 4am and back in the hanger at 415, Darcy joined me an hour later. Turns out the new style coupler has a grease fitting to lube the splines that grinds a slot in part of the transom assembly if you install it, real fun to get out once the motor is bolted in. Okay were over that kick in the junk, get the motor alignment done, all the new wiring for the Delco Voyager distributor, out drive installed, and the boat outside and hooked to the muffs to fire. Start cranking it and not getting it to fire, no fuel in the carb, check the discharge from the fuel pump and nothing, remove the fuel pump
( which I just put a new filter in) and when you stroke it it's blowing out the vent hole $%^^$, so I look around and remembered the 4.3 out of the itchy boat looks like that pump will fit, just had to change the clock position of the bottom half, install it and crank some more, still no fuel, but we pour a little down the carb and it fires and runs a little but there is a real bad grinding sound, try again still a grinding sound, start looking around and there is a whole wack of aluminum shavings in the bilge bellow the bell housing, pull the starter nothing there, so we have to pull the motor. In the mean time as we disconnect the fuel line from the tank there is this nasty smelling honey colored gas in the line what the ^*$%. So we try to pull some fuel out of the supply line and can't get any, then I pull off the brand new spin on water seperating filter and dump the contents in a glass jar looks just like honey and smells terrible, we took the tank out 3/4 full, and it had been steamed out and dried spotless in January, dumped the gas into old jugs but it looked clear and good??? Only thing I can figure is the filter is no good. Now back to the grinding problem. Yikes pulled bell housing and the way it is cast in aluminum the port half is stepped in towards the flywheel approximatley 1/8" causing the coupler bolts to catch this step on the way by. I had to use a little Redneck engineering to fix this, not only did it grind into the bell housing it put a small crack in it. I ground the heads of the 3/8"coupler bolts down about 1/8" and ground out all the rub marks in the housing, then we painted the bolt heads and the inside of the housing put it back on and spun the motor to check for contact, took the housing back off and found no rubbed off paint so we have clearance, JB welded a strip of aluminum over the outside of the small crack last night just for peace of mind.
This morning we decided to set the motor up and run it on the ground prior to installation. Ya right @#$%. turns out the timing is pretty hard to get right on these the first time, but we did finally kick Murphy's @#$$. After running it for 20 minutes at 1200 rpm to break the cam in, it took us exactly 1 hour to put the motor back in, hook up the wires and re-install the outdrive. Now I just have to order a new fuel pump.
