Re: Marine Mechanic Difficulties
fourmax: I cant tell if the "in a way, I should consider myself fortunate" was thrown in there to grate at my nerves, or was a joke? The whole thread is about service providers, providing service. Not the customer having to crawl in on their knees begging for someone to please take their money.
He told me when I dropped it off it would be compleated in a week. And he actually had less work waiting than when he gave the quote.
As for the engine:
010 block 4 bolt main, Balanced etc. brass plugs, felpro marine head gaskets. Dished pistons with 64cc vortec heads to keep the compression ration pump gas friendly. (I actually stole the parts recipe from a guy on a checkmate forum) Its done right, for a marine specific application. But no, it doesent have Mercurisers magic fairy dust sprinkled on it, and wasnt assembled in by wizards in a far away top secret plant where boat engins are made. (I'll leave itup to you to figure out if Im joking)
Actually what I said about the shop accepting the job initially was meant to neither try to grate on your nerves nor as a joke. Most of the reputable shops in this area unless they knew the customer pretty well would tend to decline putting in an engine that either they did not supply or build or that did not come from a reputable builder that they felt comfortable with.
That is not a dig or in any way questions your abilities to put your motor together but from a shops perspective not knowing you or whoever assembled the engine they have no way to know exactly what they are installing and if the engine were to fail to start or develop mechanical problems upon initial startup then sometimes getting paid for the job they performed gets to be difficult or turns into getting involved into a lot more than they may want or have adequate time to do.
I know many years ago when I worked as a mechanic many times customers wanted to "supply their own parts" trying to save a few dollars by buying from the discount part houses or direct from salvage yards. At one time we would accomodate them but we made sure they understood that we warrantied our work but if the part they supplied was defective and we had to switch out say an alternator or transmission, engine whatever because the unit they supplied was defective that they were responsible to pay the labor for needing to switch out the part again because of the defect.
We finally quit that practice as customers would get upset when the salvage yard or discount auto parts unit was defective and would actually end up costing them more than if we supplied the part originally. Parts we sourced and supplied from our sources were also warrantied to the customer as well as the labor for the initial quoted price. So when I say that you were fortunate to find a shop that would install it was that most reputable shops tend to shy away from installing parts they do not supply because of such occurances and the customers becoming dissatisfied by problems out of the shops control.
Dang! No fairy dust or Wizards assembling in the deepest reaches of the Dungeon? May be sorry you did not spring the extra bucks for the fairy dust, worth about 50 hp you know!
Sounds like you did your research and I hope everything works well and trouble free for ya. I have just seen guys that used " performance car engines" in marine applications and the longevity of the engines was shorter than the money they had spent or invested to say the least. Usually the culprit was the combination of sustained high rpms and balance of the engine not being not being close enough or valvetrain failures.
Just out of curosity did you stroke a 350 block or destroke a 400 block to get the "383"?
Not trying to sound like a smart a** in my original post just do not want you to spend a ton of money that goes boom on you. As far as the shop comments just trying to point out that sometimes shops get busy and with your situation you are lucky to find a good shop that will work with you to intall your engine for you. Good luck on all going well and smooth.
