A lot of blow-by deposits in the rest of the engine, along the rockers and the valley. It is typical and exactly what to expect from a pull. The advice is quality - pull it down and do a rebuild. You will feel a lot better about it. Unless you plan to drop a motor in it and sell the boat off in a year, over time you will feel a lot better about it.
Thats my struggle. It's a good bit bigger and nicer than our current boat, and the wife and I wanted something bigger. So we may end up liking this boat and wanting to keep it. But we've also talked quite a bit about selling both boats to go to a pontoon. Right now we don't know, as this new boat hasn't been on the water yet. I bought it a couple days before the first really hard freeze of the year, and boating season is over here already.
Knowing how well these vortec motors typically run, and how long they last, I'm leaning towards keeping it cheap and just dropping in the boat if the bottom end bearings look decent. I know the right thing would be a full rebuild. But if we do decide to keep the boat, and the motor shows signs of looking tired, thats always something I could do over another winter. I don't want to half ass it to the point of it being junk on the first start up. But to my untrained eyes, I don't see anything that would lead me to believe the motor is total junk. Used, yes. But not toast.
Also, I'm not a hardcore speed junky on the water either. Most of what we'll do is either idling around, fishing, or pulling our kids in a tube. A rare blast across the lake, but it's a really small lake, so even that is only a few minutes, and with our current boat, I just get it on plane and kind of let it hang in it's happy place, I don't push it to the breaking point ever. So I feel like I'll be fine with a used motor unless I find significant damage in the bottom end.
Going to be a long time to wait to get this thing in the water sadly.
