Re: Chevy/Volvo 305 or 350 LongBlock Upgrade Advice
The Chevy crate motor I am about to buy for $1,399 at my nearby Chevy dealer is a "long block" (heads, timing chain included) plus tin (pan and timing cover and valve cover) all included and painted black. They call this a "long block plus tin" as most remanufactured long blocks do not include tin, you just replace your own.<br /><br />I am still researching, and I can replace the camshaft while the engine is out with the "correct" marine cam from Sierra parts, # 18-1484 camshaft for about $152 is as best I can tell the exact marine camshaft instead of the "truck is almost the same" camshaft and this is according to posts elsewhere here the one described in Dennis Moores small Chevy block for boats book (which I ordered from Amazon but seems to be now out of print). So the new Chevy crate plus this cam, plus a double check on freeze plugs to make sure they are brass will get me almost there with "new" for about $1,550.<br /><br />Now, what to do with distributor and intake manifold? My original manifold seems servicable, a little rust on the bottom, looks like it can be cleaned up if I bring it out and get it tanked. But, that will be say $50 bucks or so, so now I just swept the catalogues and an hunting up a manifold with many choices for about $150. Only problem seems to be one that will fit the pre 1986 bolt pattern. Seems complex because many of these have to match a camshaft configuration and so on, so I am probably just going to tank and then re-use my old manifold just for simplicity.<br /><br />My Rochester carb, found a volv-penta rebuild kit for about $27 from Boatfix.com. Old carb looks pretty clean to me, but will rebuild anyway. I do not want to buy a rebuild because I want all the exact little parts to fit all the exact little hoses and linkages that are in my boat. I feel more comfortable with just the same exact Rochester on the same exact manifold.<br /><br />Getting the distributor? Many choices for about $150. No decision yet but will probably go for an HSI electronic and see what happens, and keep my old one around just in case. <br /><br />All the hoses and gaskets seem to be at boatfix.com under Volvo-Penta. <br /><br />Also found a kit of all stainless steel bolts for the 350 engine for about $77. This is made by ARP and is kit 534-9601 and is described at
www.arp-bolts.com and sold at boatfix.com. So probably not every single bolt, but probably 80 or 90% of them, and I will clean up the old ones for the few that are not in this kit.<br /><br />Bolt my old starter, alternator, fuel pump back up and if any of them have problems buy marine replacements from boatfix.com. So far $0 estimate they worked fine when the valve blew.<br /><br />Ahh, the raw water pump is actually the Chevy equivalent, and don't read any posts on this. Hard to tell what condition it is in because water pumps wear out bearings. So, I plan to replace the pump with a reman auto pump, and the other pump is marine and all I need to do with this is the new impeller that just slides in. None of the boat part sites list the raw pump just the second pump parts so I guess the auto equivalent will do the trick. <br /><br />Anyone have any worries about what raw water pump to get?<br /><br />So now this plan is up to about $1900 in parts. I am waiting to get my Seloc repair manual from Amazon and am praying they can find a copy of Moores Small Block Chevy Marine book before I actually buy all this just to make sure, but the above combination seems to do the trick. I want to read what Moore says I can get away with for marine use in terms of performance, but if I cannot get his book, replacing the cam with the exact marine cam for $150 seems to put me 99% of the way back to Volvo for half the price of a new Volvo.<br /><br />Distributor is only remaining real question, and suggestions would be helpful.<br /><br />My son owns an automobile cherry picker (Harbor Freight) and I went out to measure the geometry yesterday, and I will just make it or miss getting the engine over the transom by a hair. If I miss by a hair I plan to video tape the experience and will sell the DVD rights for a reality TV show that focuses on comedy, tragedy, with swear words and danger thrown in. The money I get from this DVD will be used to buy a brand new boat, and I will at that point just drop the engine through the bottom of the boat for a finale and have the whole mess hauled off to the dump.<br /><br />All the feedback on this site helps alot with all these decisions and this winter rebuild will be quite fun.
<br /><br />Anyway, I was trying to figure out if these truck engines came with intakes and tin, etc. so that I could compare it to what I paid for Loooong block, small block chevy 350 marine remans from Marine Engines Inc, ... So, what I paid is around the same price which makes me happy 
