thirdchildhood

Yes, I'm aware of that but many people are not. Again, I'm not bashing anyone. I'm sure the 496 can be made to perform and I wish Matt the best.

Keith, I think the 600 package is the way to go and I'm glad yours worked out well.

Raylar

He's correct about the 496. If you're looking for bulletproof out of the box, the stock heads are junk, the stock intake manifold doesn't flow well and the stock 496 rotating assembly likes to grenade (as we've seen countless times now on this forum). This engine needs a lot of parts to be a 600hp engine but runs very reliably if you're willing to build one.

Again correct, Ray had an axe to grind and wasn't very good at "marketing." If you want to build old school 502s, cool! Frankly, we don't care what generation BBC engine you build. If you want to build a fuel injected GEN 7 496, we offer parts to make them better, thats all.

The cool gap intake manifold (525 / 600 kits) is no longer available. There's not enough demand in the boat market for us to produce them. We've seen good results from modification of the stock intake manifolds and that is what we sell now for naturally aspirated engines. We also offer a velocity stack manifold made from billet aluminum, but they're custom made for each customer. Now we tell the boat guys who want more air to call Whipple and run a 3.3L blower on top of our parts - its a great way to make a casual 800hp.

SDFever

No intentions of starting a fight or trouble here but..... Let's take each item one at a time -

I was all but thrown off this site quite a while back and pretty much lost interest but some other things have come along and well….

You can go back and read my posts about hp gains and headers from like 5 years or so ago??. I was (I believe) one of the first guys on here telling the world that headers are nice. I have them. I like them but they do NOT add any noticeable power to boat engines. I was clear on this and I had many people contact me personally. Quite a story on that but now it’s common knowledge that spending 5k for exhaust is not gonna make you go faster. I’m sincerely sorry for your experience and I tried all I could to help others catch on before lots more went out and fell for that claim (CMI – Mercury; who cares right?).

Regarding your friend who did the Raylar Kit and saw less than what you were expecting - Their stuff DOES work and it does what they say it’s supposed to. BUT, this requires the boat owner to go to the end. I’m not going to mention names but many people on this forum have contacted me about my results and what we did here. Hardly ANY of them ever want to listen entirely or do all that’s required to make the boat do what they want. I don’t know it all and I try not to ever give false or misleading advice but I can tell you everything we’ve learned was done the hard way. Usually, you find that the first problem to fix is not the hardware or parts. It’s “the guy” messing with it. Talking to a lot of people and engine builders can be a good thing but if you don’t talk to people who have done anything much with this platform then you are kinda screwin’ yourself because I never met an engine builder who said anything good about something that he doesn’t do ‘all the time’.

If Matt had the luxury of simply tossing everything he already owned and paid for in the trash then it’s a useless argument. If he did not have that luxury, then the 8.1 will serve him fine while saving a lot of other investment.

Hardly anyone seems to ever acknowledge the fact that the blue engines are simply designed and built strictly for a class. That’s it. So, then it’s fair to say that many if not all, of them are over-built for the power that’s advertised. The big difference is they make that advertised power for a long time (usually if properly maintained & excluding exhaust leaks). This style of building helped promote fair racing among boats and created an industry standard platform where everyone stood a chance and you had a benchmark comparison.

As far as how you were treated by Ray; yeah, there are a lot of folks out there who don’t much care for that individual but he is no longer tied to the product or company and hasn’t been for long time.

Back to work; have a nice day! 

thirdchildhood

Thanks Larry. Good to see you posting here and following this build. SDFever, thanks.

SDFever

U2! You guys got lucky today. To see larry type a post that long would put you in stitches :-)

SDFever

I just finished the new gen vii. 4.5 stroke and 4.560 bore with larry's heads, 105mm etc. I'll let ya know what it does in the boat. Should be back together within 2 weeks or less. I also bought the 'Drive Guardian' from MDC. Can't wait to see how long my gears last now.. It might pencil -

donzi matt

I never thought you were beating up on me, I dig your Donzi, and have watched a couple of videos of that 525 barking on youtube. Truth is, if I had only one motor I probably would have bought a 525, but I have twins, and I just couldn't swing the coin to buy two used 525's and refresh them.

Larry has been great to deal with, and I am impressed with what I have bought. There is nothing magical here just the same recipe that makes power on every other big block. I will say the heads look very, very nice. The cam would appear to be ground by cam motion, and I like what I saw there. It's hard to tell how much was done to the intake, but what I can see looks to be done nicely. An Accufab 90mm throttle body is about the only obvious thing that lets you know the motor isn't stock, you can hardly see the heads under everything.

I only had one hitch in this whole project, and that is the front crossover pipe. With the thinner head gaskets the bolt holes just won't quite line up. I ended up opening the bolt holes up to 1/2 inch to get things copacetic. Other than that everything fit perfect, lined up right, and went together properly. I am waiting on my Rinda to get here to properly dial in the bypass hole in the throttle body and set the TPS properly. It certainly sounds healthier than a stock 496 HO, I am very much looking forward to the next phase when I can really put some cam to it and a nice exhaust on it. I set the fuel pressure, hit the starter, and it fired up nearly instantly. The only gaskets I replaced were the exhaust gaskets and the intake gaskets, and I could have probably reused them if I wanted to, but they seemed iffy so I replaced them. The only thing I need to find now is a flame arrester to fit this throttle body, the stock one is way too small.

https://youtu.be/WWG8BEXrgIY

Keith Atlanta

Hacksaww the slits in the flame arrestor about 1/4 inch more. Then force them on. They will deform a little.

ICDEDPPL

That was fast!

Keith Atlanta

Whoa whoa whoa? Wait a minute!


Did you dyno it? If you didnt dyno it what do you expect it to make?
Pictures?
What block?
What cam? (213?)
What heads? (Extreme?)