Don and others:
I will send some photos tommorrow. Parts for the engines have been rolling in almost every day. And every evening is filled with painting new parts, derusting others and putting them all together. The manifolds are all in place and torqued down. I will put the gaskets and risers onto the manifolds tonight and torque on the nuts to about 3/4 recommended for one day and let the permatex dry, then go back the next day and torque them to the recommended setting. The hoses and lower elbows (I am going with the 4 inch to the Y, then 5 inch to the muffler and exhaust ports) and mufflers should come tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I have finished glassing in the new plywood on transome on the Wellcraft, Mercrewser, but it still looks like your boat to me, except unfinished. Totally!
And I am getting ready to try to start the Marathon 24 if I can get a warm day. It seems the bed logs are satuated with water and have settled or crushed the bedlogs about 1/4 inch on one side. I may have to pull the engine up and slide a long 4 inch wide piece of iron under both sides of the engine to stop this process. It is a 5.0 lt. Mercruiser with Alpha 1 outdrive, so I think I can get a way with it.
When it comes to rust on the engines, I know I will have to give away some of the very good looks that others have achieved when taking the engines down completely. Because I am simply adding new exhaust parts and some hoses, there are some places I can not get to, in order to clean. I am using a Dewalt 4 inch grinder with a twisted wire cable wheel and another type of twisted wire cable to take all the rust off down to bare metal. These twisted cable products do the job. But they are dangerous because of their strength. Glasses and leather gloves are de rigor. Otherwise, I use the good old wire brush, then several coats of paint.
I found the problem with the old manifold that busted. On the older style, there is a clean out port on the end of the manifold with its own gasket. This gasket failed, water leaked down to where the manifold was hottest and it cracked. It had been that way for a while because the manifold was very rusty there. The new style of manifold has eliminated this problem. When visiting with the Anchorage Marina staff in NY, one of the mechanics pointed out, that in his experience, when he began to see rust or corrosion between two metal parts joined with a gasket, that probably it was time to replace those parts because they were pretty rusted out from the inside. This is what I did, rather than have the old parts boiled out. It is more costly, but now I am good to go with no aprehension about an exhaust failure. Not to worry, I will find something else to angst about!!!!!!!
Jerry
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