Update: Engines are done. Like my experience with them on my last boat, the guys at J Diesel burned through the project pretty quickly, 2 months from start to finish. They did say if I was ever having problems like this with mechanics again they would make a special trip up here instead of having engine damage. He is giving me some grief over refusing to warranty the engines until the cutlass bearings are replaced since the shafts are too hard to turn. Also wants the starboard seacock replaced, it was frozen 3/4 open, which explains why that one always ran warmer than the other one on plane. So the boat is out of the water and getting that stuff done right now. After that on to sea trial and break in.
On the short trip from my dock to the other marina to get hauled out, I wasn’t expecting to notice anything but the difference was noticeable. They both start if you even look at the button now, no smoke. The throttle response is instant, it used to have to think about what you were asking it to do for a split second. The biggest difference is vibration and noise. The vibration they used to have when running is just plain gone, you could set a wine glass on top of the engine and it wouldn’t slosh now. They are quieter now with the engine access panels off than they were with them in place before. Not sure what that’s about, but a noticeable difference.
There were some add on items, the biggest one being a couple of the turbo housings were out of spec from wear / exhaust erosion so they put 4 new turbos on. That added $9k to the project. The exhaust blankets were original and began falling apart when moved, there were random things like that. These guys do pre and post rebuild seatrials, during the initial one he noticed my port transmission pressure was low and kept coming out of gear at higher throttle settings. He took it apart and somebody had replaced a line with teflon tape, and a piece of it broke loose and had partially clogged the little strainer tip in there. He installed external transmission oil filters, says the strainer tips clogging are a relatively common problem and that will stop it from happening again. All in all this appears to be heading for a landing right around the $70k mark.
I could not have repowered the boat for anything close to double that figure. I certainly couldn’t have had it done in this amount of time so that I still got to use it this summer. Based on that, I feel like I made the right choice. I am not expecting any real performance boost when it’s all done, my experience with detroits has been they will still give you the horsepower with everything in the world wrong with them they just behave badly around the dock. I hope to have it back by the weekend and be able to say for sure.
ETA: They did get a matched set of injectors from a custom shop that are within some small % spec of each other, I do appreciate the advice on that.
