350 MAG MPI Sunsetter swap

[martinarcher]

Well I ended up buttoning this motor up enough to fire it on the pallet.  It runs great so that's at least good news the EFI and top end should be salvageable.  

I got most everything I want to transfer pulled off this block and will start cleaning parts up.  I got a lead on a Vortec truck engine locally with 60k miles out of a wrecked bread truck so I'm headed to get it on Thursday then I can start engine building and making some forward progress.  

Here's where I'm at now....minus the fact that I pulled the cam at lunchtime.  The block cracked good in the valley between #5 and #7.  Interesting note upon disassembly, the head gaskets from when Merc built the motor have some major restriction in the water passages between the block and head.....interesting.  I bought a pile of parts from Marine Power to rebuild so I'll be interested to compare gaskets.  

 

[martinarcher]

What you don't want to find when you pull the lines to your remote oil filter....

 

[Woodski]

The small holes are to maintain water pressure in the block to prevent localized boiling and to ensure full filling of the block particularly for the rear cylinders.  Marine head gaskets have stainless compression rings for corrosion protection (raw water).

[martinarcher]

Time to resurrect this old thread. 

I ended up buying a replacement block/engine off Craigslist that was out of a low miles wrecked truck.  I found out when putting a new rear main on it that the thrust bearing was cooked and the crank had also severe wear on the thrust surface.  I gave up on using that bottom end and just pulled the motor down to the block and took the block into the machine shop to start over with a good foundation.  

I got the block back this week.  I cleaned it up good and put a coat of primer and paint on it.  I checked the crank clearance with the new main bearings and it looked good so I lubed everything up and put the crank back in and torqued all my caps.  

I went to gap my piston rings and realized I ordered 5/64 rings instead of 1.5mm rings to fit the factory Merc pistons.  I'll send these back to Summit and get some new ones on the way to fit.

 

[Woodski]

@martinarcher - FYI the skinny rings are a little trickier to keep in the groove as you slide the piston down the ring compressor and the jump from the ring compressor to the bore.  It takes a bit of technique and making sure the compressor is flush to the block, not as easy as the fatter ring pack.  Don't forget to gap the rings, I am sure you are on top of it.  By clean up are you meaning you were able to stay at standard bore size or did you go over?  Comment on ring size implies new pistons.

[martinarcher]

On 9/17/2022 at 2:02 PM, Woodski said:

@martinarcher - FYI the skinny rings are a little trickier to keep in the groove as you slide the piston down the ring compressor and the jump from the ring compressor to the bore.  It takes a bit of technique and making sure the compressor is flush to the block, not as easy as the fatter ring pack.  Don't forget to gap the rings, I am sure you are on top of it.  By clean up are you meaning you were able to stay at standard bore size or did you go over?  Comment on ring size implies new pistons.

I expected a .010 over bore but it only required a hone which was good.  I ordered a set of plasma moly Sealed Power piston rings and they are all gapping between 0.020 and 0.024 which I believe should be fine since the min clearance for this bore should be about 0.018.  I'm reusing the pistons out of the Merc block since they only has 200 hours on them.  I was apparently just a block head when I ordered the thicker ring pack.  I'm thinking I accidently measured the piston rings on the pistons that came out of the truck block instead of the Merc block.  Thanks fore the heads up on sneaking the thinner rings into the bores.  Hopefully I'll be dropping them all in this week!

[martinarcher]

Engine is all together.  Got the old motor out last night with the car lift crane I built.  Really happy with how well it worked.

I have almost everything I need moved off the old block onto the new one just need to mate up the Velve Drive tonight, wire the plugs, put the new water pump on and fire the engine for a test run before it goes in.

[martinarcher]

Well I got the old engine stripped and the flywheel transferred over.  Put a new damper plate on and got the bell housing and tranny installed.  The fun part was the cooling on the engine.  The tranny cooler on the old engine was on the port side of the block mounted to the engine mount.  The new engine has the fuel cooler mounted there along with the fuel pump.  After some bracket building and some creativity with hosing I got the tranny cooler mounted and installed on the starboard side of the block.  I'm pretty happy with how clean it all came out. 

Pro engine building tip....before you prime the oil pump with your drill at midnight be sure to install your oil filter.  Oil everywhere!  

I fired it on a pallet and set by timing to 8 BTDC with a light at idle.  Question for the MEFI1 owners, do you have to put this thing into a service mode to properly set timing?  The manual references it but doesn't say anything on how to do that.  It refers to the "Mercruiser Scan Tool".  I thought I remember people jumping a couple pins together and the ECM holding the idle a bit higher for setting timing.  

The crane made putting it back in the boat super easy and she's about half hooked back up when I was ready to turn in last night.  Still need to hook up exhaust manifolds, align the shaft coupling, and build a bracket for the ECM.  THe worst thing I can see is going to be finding a home for the Perfect Pass servo.....the ECM is sitting tight where I'd like to mount it.  We'll see, I won't need Perfect Pass for 10 or so hours of runtime during break in anyways...

[justgary]

22 minutes ago, martinarcher said:

Question for the MEFI1 owners, do you have to put this thing into a service mode to properly set timing? 

Just jumper A to B on the data port with the engine running.  The engine idle should change a bit because the IAC pintle will fully close.  Set the base timing to 10 degrees.  Remove the jumper and restart the engine.

The PCM MEFI 1/2 manual is available and should be close enough to Indmar for just about everything you might need.

https://marinepowerusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ELECTRONIC-FUEL-INJECTION-MEFI-1-2-5.7L-350CID-8.2L-502CID.pdf

[martinarcher]

Awesome.  Thanks Gary!

[Woodski]

As for PP mounting, simple, get a bicycle brake / shifter cable & housing and make it whatever length you want, hardware store crimp for the rope to cable joint.  I did my own as I wanted it a bit longer and it works great.  I mounted it on the rubber exhaust tube a bit past the riser.  I did add some aluminum foil around the open part of the servo bracket to eliminate some RFI interference.

Do your risers have an O2 bung provision?  I have the cast risers with those same manifolds (older vintage I am thinking) and if I were pondering an FI update would need somewhere to plug them in.  Did you source your manifolds direct?

[justgary]

1 hour ago, Woodski said:

As for PP mounting, simple, get a bicycle brake / shifter cable & housing and make it whatever length you want, hardware store crimp for the rope to cable joint.  I did my own as I wanted it a bit longer and it works great.  I mounted it on the rubber exhaust tube a bit past the riser.  I did add some aluminum foil around the open part of the servo bracket to eliminate some RFI interference.

Do your risers have an O2 bung provision?  I have the cast risers with those same manifolds (older vintage I am thinking) and if I were pondering an FI update would need somewhere to plug them in.  Did you source your manifolds direct?

Everything from MEFI 1 to MEFI 4 was generally set up for open loop operation in boats, so no O2 sensors are used.

[martinarcher]

2 hours ago, Woodski said:

As for PP mounting, simple, get a bicycle brake / shifter cable & housing and make it whatever length you want, hardware store crimp for the rope to cable joint.  I did my own as I wanted it a bit longer and it works great.  I mounted it on the rubber exhaust tube a bit past the riser.  I did add some aluminum foil around the open part of the servo bracket to eliminate some RFI interference.

Do your risers have an O2 bung provision?  I have the cast risers with those same manifolds (older vintage I am thinking) and if I were pondering an FI update would need somewhere to plug them in.  Did you source your manifolds direct?

Awesome info.  Thanks!  I have an entire bike shop in the garage and didn't even think of a brake/shift cable and making a custom length!  I like the longer idea and mounting deeper past the engine on the exhaust tube near the riser where its nice a rigid.  

Gary is right, MEFI runs open loop and just uses the knock sensor as an input.  

 

[justgary]

My PP servo is strapped to the starboard forward cooling hose.  You should have enough cable to get it over there above the front of the manifold.

[martinarcher]

Project complete!  It runs like a champ and the quick starts sure put a smile on my face after fighting hard starts for the last two seasons.  

I can't believe how hard it comes out of the water and I'm still breaking it in and not doing WOT starts!  The extra horsepower will sure be nice.  Spent 4 hours Sunday running up and down the river on glass.  

[ahopkins22LSV]

No cold start video?

[martinarcher]

Haha!  No cold start but I did take a quick hot start video.  A month ago turning off that key would mean finding a can of starting fluid or waiting a LONG time to let it cool to restart.

 

[Woodski]

Blasphemy there is no skier / barefooter behind you ... just sayin'   I think the extra load from a carbon form hanging on to a handle would actually help the break in:-)

Nice job! 

[martinarcher]

6 hours ago, Woodski said:

Blasphemy there is no skier / barefooter behind you ... just sayin'   I think the extra load from a carbon form hanging on to a handle would actually help the break in:-)

Nice job! 

I guess I get half credit.....I skied with the neighbor behind his Nautique since I didn't want to keep my throttle position the same for long.  The water was 48 so we both earned it in trunks!  If I didn't ski I would have had another hour of break in on the clock but it was worth it!

[FL33XN275]

when was the last time you checked/replaced your riser/manifold. i can see some corrosion at the gasket where the manifold meets the riser. 

 

the manifolds look like they are standard height, have you looked at replacing them with Stainless steel 

[martinarcher]

On 12/11/2022 at 11:18 PM, FL33XN275 said:

when was the last time you checked/replaced your riser/manifold. i can see some corrosion at the gasket where the manifold meets the riser. 

 

the manifolds look like they are standard height, have you looked at replacing them with Stainless steel 

I'm guessing you didn't look at the pictures on page 2?  I'm running Stainless Marine high torque manifolds.  The manifolds from the first post came with the Merc fuel injected motor and won't see time on my boat.  

[Michigan boarder]

I think it's a fantastic project, and really makes that boat something even more special!  Congratulations man!

That said, I'm a little disappointed to not see 4 pages of "well, what am I supposed to do now?" and "another snag today, I'm not sure how I will....." and "this is definitely not what I ordered, time to send it back and wait for...."

[Nitrousbird]

Maybe I missed it, but what did you do in terms of ECU, which is the hardest part to figure out on these types of swaps.

[Steve B.]

I'm thinkin' carb'd nitrousbird. I'm sure he'll chime in. I know next to nothing about programming these engines, but it can't be that whacked. It would be cool if there was some open source code for factory settings as a base, then use that as a template to start with your own tune. Then make it easy to either wirelessly send that to a display/contoller (Ipad) with proper app, with various drivers for the different items you have connected and have at it. Template could include various gauge configurations, telemetry on different tabs or whatever, including sound, lighting, etc. control for the boat.

Essentially, it shouldn't be that difficult.

Steve B.

[justgary]

15 hours ago, Nitrousbird said:

Maybe I missed it, but what did you do in terms of ECU, which is the hardest part to figure out on these types of swaps.

It looks like he used a piece of that marine cardboard to secure it to the port manifold, similar to the OEM position.  He really didn't go into detail about the cardboard, though.