Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

The rivets are soft. You can drill them out in a second.

Liquid fuels still pack more energy into a small space and are quicker to refuel. Check these guys out. http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/

I can understand doing this stuff for fun and a challange. Good luck with your endeavor. Keep in mind, it's easy to make the hp. The hard part is to make it smooth, easy to shift and dock and go many hours between major maintanence.

A few things that are seen in these engines, conventional heads. The valvetrain is the weak point in these engines. Big Chief style heads need to be rebuilt every 25 hrs. Conventional heads flow plenty for the rpms and they have help from boost. A friends 540 with AFR 315 heads made 1200 hp at 13lbs...

Sorry if this sounds a little harsh but if your brother in law is building a million dollar boat, why is he going with an inexperienced engine builder and holding him to such a low budget? Sterling and Mercruiser are among the few builders most people would consider for a build like this. Also 1000h...

Here's how I did it. Sorry for the small picture. It's a 20mm dia. plug driven in and staked 4 plcs. No oil pressure problems in 8 years.

If you want to run big cams, you need to get dry headers. For under hatch use, they are water jacketed but the water is plumbed out of thru hulls. Trying to exhaust a 427 at 5800 rpms thru stock manifolds has to be inefficient also. These guys are resonable. http://boatheaders.com/

I'm using Edelbrock Super Victor intakes. They're supposed to use standard length distributers. Do you think the dist is hung up too high?

Hi, I just started my new 598 and I have no oil pressure. With my oil priming tool and a weak drill motor I get 45lbs. When I started it with my old (about 15 years) marine MSD distributer from my previous Gen5 motor I got nothing. The distributer is engaging the oil pump. Is there a compatability p...

Tube headers can also come fully jacketed for use in closed engine bays. A lot of offshore boats use them.

There are water jacketed dry headers that do not mix water with the exhaust at all. The tailpipes/collecters are water jacketed also. They are loud enough to give you a headache though and all of that stainless steel is expensive.

I realize you're at high altitude and you need some way to approximate sea level performance, but is a 38% correction factor really accurate. I seem to recall that SAE doesn't allow that.

Almost looks like a roller lifter failure where the wheel bearings have fallen out and the sides of the lifter are now rubbing on the cam. Don't ask how I know this. But it seems unlikely that this would happen on two lobes next to each other.

If it's a Mercruiser Magnum, it's standard rotation. Counter rotating is taken care of in the outdrive or transmission if it's straight drive.

There is an high perf. boat website called www.Offshoreonly.com where you might have some luck.