Fixing A Boat With A 454 Big Block Engine

what the heck no I did not buy a boat this is my brother's boat and he took it to a boat mechanic and it's still having problems afterwards and he asked me if I would look at it and I said I don't know about boats sure bring it down I'll see what I can do so the main thing is uh it's not starting he says it makes a horrible grinding noise when you try to start it and the mechanic told him that he shimmed the starter I assume that's messing with the spacing where it bolts on uh not something I've ever done before said when he did it that it probably wouldn't last very long and sure enough it didn't doesn't make a lot of sense to me uh you ought to be able to make the starter work correctly and last a long time that's what they do I'm going to tear into this I don't know uh if this is going to be video worthy if it's not you wouldn't have seen this if you're seeing this then there was something interesting so let's get to work normally if I want to back in I just pull up up there but I've got a wood pallet in the way so I pulled further down the hill and it's so muddy I can't back up so a little bit of a pain but we'll get it in there all right here we are inside needs a little cleanup but actually boats in pretty good shapee but it's an inboard outboard I've worked on Outboards before they're easy to well much easier to get to everything never worked on an inboard outboard so H hopefully this will be an interesting experience there's your air filter it's not really a filter it's more of a screen just over full which probably where they filled it to this is a mer Cruiser 7.4 L 8 cylinder it's a V8 and uh it's 454 cubic in I didn't realize it at the time but this is the classic Chevy big block 454 engine used in all sorts of vehicles pickup trucks it's just modified for a marine application so my understanding is getting to the starter is tough yeah I think it's tucked back in like kind of right back in there well I'd really like to get the batteries in and crank it over just to see what it's doing that's sort of the first rule is demonstrate and verify the problem but you know this is my brother uh I'm pretty confident that there's going to be an issue here I'm waiting to talk to him about how these batteries go in uh cuz there's two different batteries I'm not sure which side goes where anyway I'm going to start ripping stuff out of the way kind of wire connection down here go into that you see maybe I can just take this panel off and be able to leave the wires connected that'll do it you know this thing is just needlessly in the way I think I'm going to take that off of there I think I can see why uh his mechanic was complaining [Music] so yeah I mean you can kind of see the starter there there's a bunch of junk in the way I'm going to have to do a fair amount of disassembly just to really be able to get it but before I do any of that I do want to get these batteries in here I am going to hit my head on this thing endlessly now for the record in a car you have to be a little more careful because you've got a grounded chassis and that's why you always do the you disconnect the negative First that disconnects the chassis then you disconnect the positive because if you disconnect the positive while you're sitting here wrenching on it if you bump a piece of metal you're going to have a short from the negative the chassis to your your positive well here everything's fiberglass there's nothing around me that is uh essentially negative I just have to not touch the other side of the battery and even with this battery hooked up this cable goes straight to a disconnect which is off so even though I've got these other hot wires they are not hot right now so yeah this is actually pretty easy all right so batteries are hooked up so now all I need to do is put turn this on that only connected one of the batteries but uh no smoke all right now they're both connected see that haven't let the smoke out yet so now I should be able to crank this thing over uh yes the engine would need cooling if it were to start but uh I'm not going to start it and this thing's been sitting for over a year uh my brother said you'd have to put some fuel in the carburetor and do stuff to to get fuel to it to even hope for it to start so it won't start but I it will crank or it should crank so let's see what it does oo well that doesn't sound good that's hideous that sounds like completely stripped bendex starter is right there now you can see where the battery Cable's going my assessment is there's something wrong with it I mean that sounds horrible it doesn't sound like it's just not engaging all right now we got to try to start ripping and tearing and get that starter out of there this is going to be fun and this is not going to be easy um but this hose and this hose definitely need to get out of the way it took a little doing that hose just goes down to the belge pump so this line here is just right smacking the way and I'm pretty sure that's a coolant line now of course there's no coolant in this it uses the water that it's running in so it's just going to have water in it so I'm going to try to take that off okay all right there is the starter and uh I think the bolts are on the bottom all right we are going down with the endoscope and I'm looking back up at the starter and yeah there you go bolt there and there yeah we'll pull the starter out of there and then hopefully we'll be able to get a look and see what's going on that a horrible grinding noise I am going to hit my head on that thing a 100 times before this job is done every time I try to come out of there I hit my head I can actually see that one hey it wasn't even tight and they've put it so close to the uh the side that you can't get the the ratchet on there just by feel I'm doing the yeah the other bolt wasn't tight either but not loose enough that just tightening it is going to fix it but weird that they're not even tight this is going to be fun to put back in okay there [Music] all right so the control wire is yell yellow with a red stripe okay starter is out I hit my head yet again there's the flywheel you have a much better view than I do but what I can see are some little bits of metal but the teeth don't look bad it's just like the the gears were not engaging I feel a dish right there like the Bendix was coming out but there's still teeth left it's like it was n um wasn't engaged enough into the flywheel teeth and I think I see what he meant by shimming why did he shim it these are the shims they were between the block and the starter all right I'm a little confused shimming it brought it down from here that would have disengaged it from those flywheel teeth and you can see that they were barely engaged that area where it ground off it didn't even take off all the teeth I think it shouldn't have been shimmed but that that's just my first thought he must have done it for a reason I need to look into that more obviously those bolts not being very tight didn't help anything either and obviously right now those teeth barely engage with the flywheel where it is so moving it some would be a good thing h i better bar this engine over and make sure it's not locked up if it ever lands in this position again and he gets that bad noise he's going to have to Bar the engine over a little bit to get the flywheel to mesh at a different different spot for the starter right here is the crankshaft you should be able to rotate the engine right there in fact I'm going to do that in just a minute make sure this thing's not locked up whoa uh huh all right let me go get a bigger bar holy cow engine's locked up I wonder if that's just cuz it's been sitting cuz the starter's broken or if that's the reason the starter broke using foot-pounds well that ain't no good standing on this and I mean that thing just feels as locked as it can be I tried both ways when I go left it actually was loosening the bolt when I went right it tightened the bolt more than it was and I'm afraid I'm going to break the bolt off if I go any harder on it I know it's a big engine but it really should be moving under that much force what I'm going to do I'm going to pull the plugs and look in the cylinders so the plugs are perfectly accessible way down under here right there is a plug wire so and then one here nice of course there's a hose right in the way but I'm going to pull the plugs out and we're going to scope the cylinders see if this thing's maybe hydrolocked I'm looking at it with the carburetor sitting right on top there if water got down in there it could leak right down into the intake manifold and in through the intake valves right into the cylinders so I talked to my brother and asked him the story again so supposedly this thing supposedly you know how it is trusting customers I mean Brothers um now supposedly this thing ran great the last time it was used and it was then winterized parked for the winter and the next spring when he tried to start it that happened it just did that grinding sound and that's been it ever since that was a couple years ago but what I'm wondering about is if it didn't while it was sitting there over winter if it didn't get water into the top which would go in through the intake manifold and then hydrolock it which forced the starter to strip those flywheel teeth and the starter is more a symptom of the problem than the problem he says he always stored it with something covering the engine you know tarps leak so it's possible unfortunately that it just leaked into the wrong spot look at that nasty plug that looks like it's all covered in Rust let's take a look so this is cylinder number eight and you can immediately see lots of rust on the cylinder walls and that's water sitting right there that is down uh the scope is not oriented up to down and it looks like a lot of rust from condensation on the top and bottom of the cylinder wall next we're going to Cylinder 6 this is the right side of the engine so all the even numbered cylinders are over here and you can again see that there has been a lot of water sitting in here but much of it is gone uh there's several water lines and then a whole bunch of rust sitting right at the bottom where the piston and the cylinder wall are down that looks awful this is one of the worst ones here's cylinder 4 it is uh almost all the way up and there's not a whole lot to see just kind of light rust everywhere and here's cylinder 2 the Piston is also almost all the way up on this one uh but this is one of the best looking ones of the bunch and here's the slam dunk cylinder 7 on the other side of the engine and I Orient the scope so up is up and there that is water we're looking at and I'll prove it in just a second when I rock the boat you know what they say Don't Rock the Boat CU maybe you don't want to see what you're about to see that is not what you want to see inside your cylinders I also got a quick look at the valves and one is open I would bet that's the intake valve here's cylinder 5 lots of rust little bit of water is scary when that's one of the better ones cylinder 3 is most of the way up and so there's not a whole lot to see and it's hard to get a good view but there is a little bit of water sitting in it and finally cylinder 1 pretty good view of this one little bit of water uh but one of the better ones so I'm going to try to blow out cylinder 7 with an air compressor and make a big mess can you guys even see what I'm doing so let's see [Music] There It Is Well I don't think you guys can see anything anymore but and after blowing it out this is what we look like at this point I'm thinking this engine is probably going to need a complete rebuild if not just scrapped and replaced but I wasn't ready to give up just yet I'm going to work a little longer and see if I can't get this thing freed up what I'm going to do now is pry on the flywheel teeth cuz that'll give me more leverage than uh than trying to do it right here at the uh at the crankshaft pulley I don't expect it's going to work and then I'm going to flood each cylinder with ATF and let it sit so right down there you can see the flywheel I'm going to stick a pry bar down in there and see if I can't get it to move a little bit and I'm going to leave the camera up here where you guys would be able to see the pulley turning if I am successful cranking on it pretty hard it is not budging all right I'm going to squirt ATF in all the cylinders all right so this has been sitting here for a day with ATF automatic transmission fluid in all four cylinders let's see nothing so I have an idea this is from my leakdown tester that that plugs into a spark plug hole that hooks to an air hose fitting so the cylinder all the way back this way the Piston is at the top so I may be spinning the engine forward or backward depending on where it is but I don't care about that I just want to use the air pressure to help push that piston down and help me try to get this thing to turn over so let's screw this into that hole all right I took my wrench off of that cuz if this thing starts spinning I don't want that wrench to go hit something here's our air hose let's hook some pressure to it and see what it does ah shoot one of the valves is open on that not on the compression stroke so that's not helping us I need to find one that's on its compression stroke all right so this is the companion cylinder to that one this one should be on the compression stroke still leaking a lot nothing so I've got one that's holding pressure um I need to be careful here because if it starts to spin this wrench could get uh thrown with some Force but so this piston is holding 120 PSI of air pounds per square inch and the cylinders are 4 and 1/4 which comes to 14 Square in which equals 1,700 lb that that air is pushing down on that piston no good okay rather than giving up just yet I don't feel like I'm able to put enough torque on it to really try to to crack it Loose I feel like if I could just get it moving a little bit I could work it back and forth every movement every bump would break up some of the rust and maybe I could get it to turn over that's my thinking using a breaker bar on that felt very adequate I took this pulley off I took all the belts off to get them out of the way and then I made this this is a piece of 3/4 plate and it's got the same hole pattern as the the pulley bolts so that I can bolt that on there now I've got a bar on there that I don't have to worry about breaking anything and I can really torque on that thing so put an extension on it and let's give this thing some coaxing I think the pulley moved a tiny bit but I'm also moving where I'm bolted on I made the holes a little big so that they would have uh some play so that they could get to the right spot and if you're wondering why I didn't put this thing straight up and down it's cuz that's still in the way and that me removing the whole water pump that pulley is moving a little bit whether that means the Pistons are moving or not I don't know huh is that moving it sure is wow I know it's moving because my little air a pressure hose here now it has ATF squirting out of it all right yeah see moves through that range of motion much better [Music] now so I took that off cuz it's interfering with that I'd rather not take the water pump off if I don't have to so I've just gone back to the breaker bar on the Central and uh it actually is's making progress as I go back and forth except for that [Music] all right well I must say uh I have had um thought that this was a lost cause and almost abandoned well I was still trying but I wasn't real hopeful that's why I didn't film any of the building of my crankshaft turning wrench I need to modify this thing so that I'm able to spin it past that see with it like it is it just hits and it's a triangle so if I can go 120° I can just unbolt it and rebolt it and go again I think I'm just going to bend the piece of rebar let's let that cool off and then we'll go get this thing to turn over so I chase the threads on the bolts now I'm just chasing them in the holes so that I can get a good a good attachment here yeah working on boats is uh it's like a challenge of your character cuz everything is so inaccessible not all boats Outboards aren't too bad but uh this thing this whole engine is set down in this hole you've got this much room and and uh you can't even get to the spark plugs it's like a game of Twister to take the plugs out this was a big help I was able to swing it 120° and then rebolt it on and do it again a couple times and then I went back to the breaker bar now that the engine's easier to turn over well that was a 180° turn right [Music] there there's a 360 that is two full revolutions we have a free engine so let's take a look at a couple cylinders now this is number seven this is the one that had standing water in it and I mean it's got a bunch of oily junk and still some ATF in [Music] there I don't know what you'd expect with just you know this engine's maybe been turned over like three times at this point so yeah but really huh that doesn't look too bad considering look at this one this is number five and here's number three none of them look fantastic as you would expect you know what I'm seeing looks reassuring I think this thing's going to run how cool would that be I was thinking this thing was scrap for sure here's a look at Cylinder 6 this is the one that looked the worst it had the big pack of rust on the bottom and you can still see a lot of rust but uh it certainly looks a lot better than it did remember with the boroscope things are magnified they actually look a lot worse on the scope than they would look with your naked eye so I now have the enviable task of putting this starter back on the bolts have to come up through the bottom way down under there where you can hardly even see let alone reach and well yeah [Music] Oh I thought I dropped that nut so you can't really see but I'm putting the bolt up through the bottom and holding the bolt in place place and the starter with one hand putting it in position and then trying to start the threads surprisingly it works getting this bolt in the other hole totally blind I'm fighting for every quarter turn ah click torque to spec oh that is a fun place to work let me tell you well God I despise that thing I've hit my head on it a thousand times feels that way at least so in theory we can now crank this thing over with the starter plugs are still out I want to just blast as much stuff out of those cylinders as I can so right under here right behind my finger there is the output of Cylinder 6 yeah we'll see how much comes shooting out of this thing let's see if it'll crank why would it not crank I had neglected to hook up the main battery to the starter wire that'll do it let's crank you know we might actually save this thing from the scrapyard which is uh pretty darn rewarding I feel I should mention I wasn't actually done I mean I had kind of given up on Hope but I was going to keep trying some things and if my custom crankshaft pulling wrench had not worked I was thinking about trying to get the ATF out of the cylinders and then filling them with a vapo rust and just get get that rust off of their chemically and then try again if that didn't work I I think I was done but um yeah I mean don't give up this was probably the worst looking one of the bunch and it still looks pretty rough the thing is as long as it doesn't get between the Rings And the cylinder wall it the damage that it's done has already been done so I think if we start getting some comp um you know basically a power stroke in here a gasoline explosion and then high pressure getting shot out of the exhaust I mean that stuff isn't going to stay in there very long it's going to get blasted out I guess I'll crank it with the starter a little bit more just to loosen everything up as much as I can and then I'm going to put this thing back together and try to fire it up let's play some twister getting these plugs back in there H I seriously doubt it comes across on camera how inaccessible everything is on this you know a car feels inaccessible but you can reach above it you can reach below it a lot of times you can get down beside it this thing I don't know it's worse I did check all the gaps they are all 35,000 like they're supposed to be okay the plugs are in that was a battle I don't know how long that took it felt like 2 hours to put in eight spark plugs plugs are in wires are hooked up I do not have uh water on the the lower unit intake yet so I can't run it for any extended period but I can run it for a few seconds and see if it's going to fire instructions from my brother are to dump about 2 O of fuel right down the carburetor and even if it does start whatever in the tank is several years old at this point so I don't know how well it's going to run but at least it's got a little bit of fres fuel and I guess we're ready is this thing going to Fire H didn't sound real happy wonder how the voltage is on those batteries I would think the two batteries together would be okay yeah let me uh let me check the voltage on our batteries 12.4 volts let's see what it is while cranking it's not that bad spinning slow right I got a jump pack on it now too let's see if that makes any difference uh let's do [Music] this starting to wonder if we have spark all right so here's the deal it's the next day I charged and we're sitting at 12.8 volts now so that's an improvement and I talked to my brother he says this thing's always hard to start after it's been sitting now it's going to be even harder with cylinders that are full of ATF and junk so um I'm going to do what He suggests before I start all the engine troubleshooting he said dump some more fuel in the carburetor and we're going to give it plenty of throttle which I was not doing yesterday but all right let's see what it does just doesn't seem like it's cranking well seems like it ought to do better than that now that starter might be damaged from what we you know from it trying to spin a locked up Engine That Could Be the issue so he says there's no choke on this thing but there's got to be a choke and in fact I think this is the choke right there it looks like it's actuated by that shaft there uh that shaft is turned by this right here this is an electric actuator of some kind I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to hook up a a little alligator clamp to the starter solenoid so that I can start it here just by touching a wire to the battery and that's going to allow me to manually choke the carburetor it's going to allow me to spray starting fluid into it and uh see if we can't get this thing to pop off I suspect that the water came in right there went right down through the carburetor into the intake Valves and into the cylinders so if that's the case the bottom of that carburetor may be full of water and um that's what we're up against right now yeah I messed with this a little bit and something was just stuck so it is choking now yeah see it sticks open but before I tried to move it it wouldn't move and makes me wonder I may not have spark nothing no spark so no spark got me thinking I had this problem on a boat my own boat in the past where um it had one of those things like it's on a jet ski you have to have like the wrist thing on and the button pressed or it kills the spark basically it it won't run I've looked it over there isn't one of those but I did find that off run what do you bet that's it let's see ooh a horrid beeping sound GL him back [Music] here seem to be having starter issues now that's lovely all right I'm baring it over a little bit put that flywheel in a different position and see if the starter will crank it that's painful full disclosure the first time I put the starter on I neglected to pay attention to the plug wires and I trapped them behind the starter uh like this so off camera I've already taken the starter back off and redid wires um because they were getting pinched so I've taken that starter off and put it back on twice now I don't know what to say here the starter bolt sheared off so the starter has rotated away from the flywheel and that's why it's not doing anything but you I tightened that with this wrench which is maybe 8 in long I made it as tight as I could cuz it was loose when I first put it in I don't think I over cranked it but uh yeah I think it's just going to need a new Bolt the problem is I have to take the starter off to get the stud out and that could be a nightmare hopefully it's not buried way up in there goodness gracious so this is why boat is a four-letter word the stud is up inside there I have one shot of being able to get this out basically trying to go right up the center blind with a left-hand drill bit is probably the only chance I have of getting that thing out of there there's just there's no room I can't even get two hands on this thing at once unreal that is just a horrible place for that to happen if I can't get it out with a left-hand drill bit I mean there's no chance of me welding in there yeah I it's pull the engine that's that's the fix for the broken bolt unbel believable all I want to do is crank it to start and this is like I'd rather the starter broke this is like the worst possible problem nope I'm not even going to be able to get a drill I can't even get a drill straight under it I have to pull this engine this is the lowest profile drill I have that's a 90° attachment but it only takes hex Shanks I'm going to see if I can drill this if I can get a little bit of a hole in there I then have these hex extractors and that one I ought to be able to tap in there and then potentially unscrew it that's what I'm going to be working on I'm way down in this hole there is no chance of me filming this so uh I'll see you back oh here's the update I'm getting little bits of metal out a boroscope here and you can see by some miracle I'm actually drilling it relatively up the center totally blonde see if I can get a bite on it with the Screw Extractor I've got to go this way I don't think I'm deep enough yeah you guys are in the way okay I just put the easy out in and I tapped it in and I started turning it it's actually working holy crap unbelievable if that didn't work you're talking about pulling the engine because of a bolt I'm going to go I'm going to go run to the store and buy a lottery ticket I'll be back starter bolts can be somewhat specialized with varying Shanks uh compared to just a standard bolt I wasn't able to get the actual starter bolts locally but I did pick up some new bolts these grade eight bolts are much stronger and uh I don't think with a box end wrench you know that's seven or 8 in Long especially with how hard it is to get my arm in there to even get any torque on it I don't think there's any chance of me uh breaking these bolts off so let's go put the starter back on I've gotten pretty good at putting this starter on with one hand I can tell you that's a skill I never wanted to learn starter is in I still have a couple spark lights on there just to confirm 90% sure that having that switch in the Run position was my issue with the spark we should be able to turn it over so the starter does not seem happy to me the good news is we did have spark so I can take these lights off of here I had taken these shims out I guess I'm going to put them back in and see if the starter's happier my concern is that if the teeth are less engaged when it gets to that point on the flywheel where it wore it down it's going to want to stop cranking maybe nura would carry it across that spot don't know maybe I should just put one back in I went ahead put both shims back in it's only 30,000 that it was shimmed let's see if it turns over better a little better I'm going to crank this thing I just want to see if spark I have an ignition tester right here I just want to confirm that I've got a reasonable spark we're definitely sparking that's interesting it built oil pressure just while cranking fired a couple times does it just need a new starter cuz I've got good battery I've got good battery voltage and it is just cranking slow now it could be all the oil that's in the upper end of this thing is just making it hard to crank over but I don't really know what to do about that um I cranked this thing a lot with the plugs out okay so here's my thinking at this point I actually suspect in a very likely place that the water got into this thing is right through the carburetor and there's a bowl kind of under this thing I've never had one of these apart but I can look down in there and see fuel so what that means to me is there might be a bunch of water down in the bottom of this and if it's sucking water into the cylinders well obviously it's not going to run yeah I've dumped fuel in there but uh I I need to get the carburetor off see what's going on and uh probably clean it up the other thing is is once I take this off I'll have direct direct access to the intake spray starting fluid straight into that and hopefully get a different result it smells like reasonable gas yellow stripe on top black on the bottom I don't think that's all fuel in fact it looks like there's a rust ring there here's some of the nastiness that came out of there I just want to see if it'll even burn if that was gasoline at least it's flammable now of course I just dumped fuel in there that's probably what's Burning uh the rest of it I think is probably just water so I let this uh settle and it did clear up actually quite a bit and I do not see waterline I think it's just old gas it doesn't smell right um it doesn't smell totally like varnish gas either but that's probably because I had dumped quite a bit of it in there so I probably put 60 cc's in here and what I drew out totals like 250 so the end result is I'm not really sure what to make of that that boat's been sitting there hasn't run in at least I think 3 years huh that doesn't look too bad and actually smells reasonable uh he said he put fuel stabilizer in there so I think that might be okay so I just blew all the gas and everything off of there um and I need to have a fire extinguisher handy in case there was a back fire this whole thing lights on fire I am going to go clean out the carburetor in the shop while all the the fumes are dissipating before I do anything else here I've never worked on a carburetor like this before so I'll probably do some stupid things yeah every time I turn it over it wants to dump Fuel and now that I'm ready it doesn't just a little spring clip did take all the bolts out didn't I tapy tap tap why doesn't that want to separate cuz it's never been apart before what i' really like to do is get everything off of it that needs to come off in order to do a uh ultrasonic on it cuz this thing could really use it yeah so this this is a Weber 9780 s I'm going to go do some Googling I'll probably be able to find a YouTube video of someone tearing down this carburetor when in doubt get someone else to tell you how to do it I did find similar ones and I think I must be missing a screw somewhere but I don't see one yeah the other guy had a two screws on the bottom there is nothing on the bottom looking down through the top so that just hooks on that those are a heater those two wires heat that up over time so the choke will open in a short amount of time but that could not go through the ultrasonic open says me look at that think this thing needs cleaned out and that's got to move and it's totally stuck down there here's a lead hammer go ahead and take these out just to see if there's some screws hiding down in it [Music] what I don't see is any bolts could that be it does that need to unscrew it's possible that was long enough turkey and there we have it two floats in the in the bows actually don't look too bad but uh all this out here looks horrible I mean this is just full of Rusty nasty junk so that really makes me think that the cause of water getting into this engine is right here through the carburetor where is all this coming from wait isn't that nice yep just stuck in there good looking stuff little spring there's got to be more than that though yeah ball so that's a little check valve Jets here so half one one and a half two 2 and 1/2 just under two and 1/2 could use a little cleaning up same one one and2 two two and a half three three almost just under three and a qu I can see the holes for the Jets look good I'll clean that out and then I'm going to go ahead and ultrasound this like it is and uh we'll blow it all out and Hope hopefully that'll do a good job with it so now that I've got this cleaned out if I put it back in it does move and it moves to wide open but then I think gravity is going to pull that to clo well not closed but partially closed and if you open the throttle and the engines really suck hard then it's going to open so I'm not sure exactly what the purpose of that is but it certainly was not working before I don't want that going through there this got a Rubber seal on it don't want to hurt the seals just take the seal off it's actually quite easy it's facing down the open nothing in it needle needle looks good floats are nice and clean so I'm not going to Ultrasound those and these needles have a little bit of rubber on the end so I'm going to leave that be I can see that's wide open yeah that's wide open now this gasket I can get it off of here I would like to rather than running it through the ultrasonic so I've used Degreaser in the past but it does tend to it'll eat away at the aluminum a little bit so I'm just going to use dish soap but quite a bit of it [Music] [Applause] while that's cleaning I'm going to see if I can get this thing to fire off with some starting fluid goodness gracious this is a real show so what happened there is somehow my uh jumper wire that I'm going from the solenoid control to the battery it shorted right here on the battery post at the solenoid to the control so it was going to keep cranking no matter what I did until I ripped that wire off of there just took me a minute to realize what was going on I think the starter just landed on that spot on the flywheel where it doesn't have anything to grab if I turn this it'll probably turn [Music] [Applause] over all right guys stupid mistake this whole time I've been cranking this thing I've had a meter here checking the battery voltage it would drop a little bit nothing bad well I just checked the voltage at the starter and it was dropping to 9 volts which is way too low so the only thing I haven't checked is behind there H so this is a battery disconnect that hooks to two batteries and it allows you to use either one battery or both together or just turn them all off but the way it's set up all the current that comes from the batteries has to go through this switch those connections look fine too but I don't think I'm getting the juice through this that I should be so this is one battery in this is the other battery in this is the wire going out to the starter so let me summarize a little troubleshooting here I'm just checking the voltage on each individual battery and the black battery on the right as you're seeing it has 13.3 volts it is definitely the better battery so earlier when I checked the voltage at the batteries it only dropped to like 11 11 and a half so now I'm checking it at the starter let's crank it and see what it does it goes straight to nine and then it hits that bad spot on the flywheel man this thing is testing my patience I don't think the start being shimmed is a good idea let me bar it over and we'll try this again yeah I'm going to 9 volts at the starter so this thing is not given me enough juice through it all right there was not room to hook them all together but I've got the big battery with the higher voltage hooked directly to the starter I've got the other battery where it was and I still got them linked together so whatever current can go through this can come from the second battery but this is a direct connection now 10 and a half didn't sound all that much better the the lead fell off that's why it's saying zero now all right man this thing this this boat is cursed man all right I am going to take this stupid starter off yet again and take the shims out I don't think shimming it helped and it keeps slipping on the fly wheel so let's do that all right that's as good as she's getting it's not perfect but uh you know it's so much better than it was so I did not ultrasound these cuz the gasket stuck to them and I didn't want to ruin that but I am spraying carb cleaner through everything and blowing it out real well and it actually seems to be in pretty good shape I don't see anything uh totally plugged one two three and a quarter dirty screen there quite a bit of junk in that actually can you see the Sho let's get that cleaned out cleaned up nicely this screwdriver barely spans that bet you this one will do a little better I'm going to put a little bit of light oil that is one clean carburetor everything's moving real nice and the choke which was stuck now operates uh really well down inside here this thing was totally stuck that's free now I think think the carb is good the question is the starter all right new starter is on its way so I got the new starter I don't see any difference I was hoping I'd see a difference on the ohms uh you know you oh across the the motor windings and I get 6 Ohms on both of them so yeah I don't know and here's a sketchy bench test which for what this is worth looks fine the bendex gear comes all the way out and it seems to turn over fairly aggressively let me change this over to the new starter bench test number two if anything I would say it sounds a little better but it appears to be doing the same thing whatever let's throw it on the boat we'll see what happens if this doesn't work going to have to pull that engine all right so the the new starter came with new bolts that's a grade eight bolt same as those now what's interesting here you know this is a 38 with a 3816 thread but this actually actually measures 390 it's bigger than 38 but it is a 3816 thread you can see how it necks down there so if I use the regular 3/8 bolt there's quite a lot of play in there and if I use the correct bolt there's still a little play but not nearly as much I'm going to use the new bolts so these are stronger just as strong as those and stronger than the ones that broke previously all right moment of truth now it's not going to start I don't even have the fuel pump hooked up but let's just see if this thing will turn over or if it's the same contact I think it sounds better it's not grinding or anything so yeah let's try to start this sucker I have hooked the fuel pump back up I put a little gas down the carburetor ready to crank this thing over and see if it's going to fire off now I can't run it long cuz there's no cooling right now but I just want to know should I put the cooling on there and actually try to run it let's see [Music] I thought it was going to go for a second you know what that's not really a fair test because the carburetor Bowl was empty totally empty I probably need to crank that a little more all right let's try again the starter is better but it's still just this engine man it must be really hard to crank all right I've got that voltmeter on the starter itself so it is seeing 12 1 12 volts right now let's see what it's getting while we're cranking did you hear what I just heard and it only went to 10 and 1 12 that's not bad all right I think I need to go get the cooling set up I think we can make this thing go and hopefully once it runs a little bit and works itself out it'll be easier to start after that so uh I always called these muffs but basically the intake for the water is right here so this goes on that and goes right over it you turn on the water and uh basically it simulates this thing being in the water and allows the cooling system to draw water up through it so let's turn the water on and uh really try to start this thing put a wire there cuz it uh it's not wanting to stay on that well if that thing comes off while I'm running it engine's toast so let's not do that [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] so very close starter is only a little bit warm [Music] I'm going to give it a break going to go get lunch we're going to come back and we're going to start this thing man this thing was so close now even with all that starting fluid I don't want to do anything you know what I haven't done is clean the distributor come on man I just want you to run I'm not even hearing a pop all right all right I've got my ignition tester on The Wire that's going to the distributor from the coil so uh I want to make sure that I've got a good strong spark there I didn't see anything I mean that should be sparking seriously no spark this thing is like a whack-a-mole man fix one problem boom you you got a new one all right well I tested between the coil to the distributor and I had no spark there so the distributor would not be the problem most likely still wouldn't be a bad idea to clean that up but I'm going to take this coil off okay okay this is the primary coil and this should be I think like from 1 to 5 ohms and I'm getting 8.9 one that's probably okay positive to the secondary coil and this should be like 5,000 ohms oh nice and I have an open circuit coil went bad right then I mean I already tested for spark and the thing almost ran an hour ago and now the coil is shot unreal whack-a-mole since I'm going to the store for a new coil I pulled off the cap en rotor I'll get new ones of those too if I can all right we're back from the Nappa yeah see I'm getting 1.6 Ohms on the primary and then we go positive to secondary I'm still not getting anything try a different meter secondary oh it's giving me a reading 10 kiloohms well that's annoying will this thing not give me kiloohms well what's this one eight and 1.8 so the numbers definitely look better on the new one I suspect I'm going to get a better spark but uh boy I thought that was open circuited but my meter was fooling me come on fluke this is a thindi and I was going to get a new distributor cap and rotor but they did not have those in stock but these look pretty good I'm just going to clean them up they should work fine do want to verify that I've got spark coming from this coil now yeah so I looked up the specs and surprisingly this will only measure up to 4,000 ohms um I've never had a meter that limits you like that I mean this goes up into Mega ohms that led me on the wrong direction on that coil unfortunately I'm going to write on this thing but I probably won't forget that okay I'm sitting here doing some shooting I have verified that I have 12 volts going to the coil and the other side of the coil is not grounded that's how the signal is sent to the coil it grounds it which grounds out the primary coil and sends a spark down the secondary coil and I was getting ready to do a um to try to simulate the coil working uh by grounding it myself and in doing so I was checking for a good ground on the Block and I found this nice bare bolt there and I've got the other lead on the negative post of the battery I've tried both batteries by the way I get the same answer 32 ohms that is not a good ground and you think well maybe that Bolt's no good so let's take the other test lead and try a different bolt H that's a good ground in fact it's connecting through those just fine I love that be beeping yeah that is a good ground that's going right into the block and um I don't have a good connection between the block and the battery now I guess I'm pretty happy about that cuz that's probably the only issue going on here the thing is is the ground is trying to get you in a position where you can see it it's that Rusty bolt right underneath that hose that won't move out of the way cuz of course it is so I'm going to go stick my head back in this hole again and fight with a bolt and get that cleaned up and get the engine block grounded properly and I bet you this is going to work man I hope the gift that keeps on giving all right I tried loosening it and it broke that said there's still it's like there's another nut there so maybe I can loosen that and unscrew that from the Block that would be nice oh I think it's coming look how dirty that thing is I've put deox on both sides of the connector of course it's in a position where you can't reach it there it is all right all right so I am on the same bolt here and I am going to go to the negative battery terminal that's what I want to see this is the wire coming from the coil to the distributor and I've got it to ground so we're not sending any Sparks to the plugs it's not going to run but let's crank it and make sure we have spark all right I'm testing the coil sorry about the beeping nothing I can do about it so it's jump that Gap when I ground this wire this is how the system works I've basically tapped into the module and I'm manually grounding the wire rather than using the regular mechanism so let's see if it [Music] Sparks yes okay so that tells me there's only one thing left there is a pickup sensor inside here and it should be intermittently sending a ground to the module and if it were doing that it would spark we just proved that uh so it must be not doing that so let me pop this cap back off of here and we'll see what we can see under there this guy right here yeah the way this works this this rotates on a Gear down inside the engine and this is on a keyed shaft there's a key there so this can only go on one way and these there's eight of these little fins here and as it goes by that sensor it knows okay well there's a cylinder and then when it hits the airspace it's okay don't spark and then when it hits this it does spark I don't know exactly when it sends the spark but you get the point this is spinning around through that sensor saying hit hit hit hit hit hit hit and what it's doing to say hit is grounding that wire the wire this one right here that we just sent a ground to the coil and verified that it sparked so it is not sending a ground through this wire like it should be all right took this thing apart I'm not surprised it's not working could be as simple as like no connection bridging that uh or or maybe that but on the other side looks like we have a diode a capacitor and then I'm not sure what that is but it looks pretty rough let me price a new one that's probably the way to go so this just came in the mail and this should be the ignition sensor coil that I ordered yeah I just waited days for this and they sent me an empty package whack-a-mole they said the soonest they can get it to me now is Tuesday which is today's Friday awesome all right it has been quite a bit over a week actually it took me a full week to get this part and then I was in the middle of other things and uh we're finally ready to continue on now the wires don't match up exactly but um I think this is the correct part I think the new parts uh are actually better I mean you can see this thing is pretty exposed and it corroded uh the new ones are potted so hopefully this will last and um make it spark that's the main thing honestly even though I was pretty confident in my troubleshooting it's always nerve-wracking with something like this cuz if it doesn't spark now well and I'm really going to have to Rack my brain for a while and I don't really feel like doing that let's throw this thing in there and see what happens we have spark okay that's gratifying all right well let me get the water hooked up and we're going to try to crank this thing up [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh come on baby [Music] get out yes [Music] [Music] actually sounds pretty good all right that is amazing to me that thing is running really well for an engine that was locked up height so yeah I'm really kind of speechless here I can't believe how well it's running it's not smoking like crazy it sounds good it's even burning old gas this gas is at least 2 years old can you believe that I don't really believe it in the back of my mind this whole time I've been thinking I'm wasting my time here listen to that I got nothing to say so guys I think think without a doubt that's my greatest save to date I really did not think this was going to be the result I thought if I did get it running it was going to be Bel and smoke like the 1010 was wow wow this thing's ready for a season of boating [Music] [Music] I told my brother I was going to give his boat a name I'm not sure if he believed me or not follow [Music] well it's not perfect nothing I do is but uh fits the boat so now the million-dollar question is how did that water get in there the way I see it there's two options it's through the carburetor my brother did say that this this thing that was above it leaked and he always kept this covered with a tarp but if there was a hole in the wrong place of the tarp and it was just dumping water right down the carburetor that would do it the other major possibility are the exhaust manifolds uh the exhaust on a boat gets ejected out through the hole and that actually requires a little more engineering than you might initially think you know exhaust on a car is no big deal you run it through a pipe and you you exhaust it out the back out the top whatever but on a boat if you're going through the hull you need a seal or your boat leaks so to take the exhaust through the hull you have to cool it first so this these things here are exhaust manifolds that have basically a water jacket surrounding the exhaust and there's a gasket here there's you know there's various seals on that system and if those leak and water then water then would run to the exhaust valves and be able to get into the cylinders so that would be the other case although there was water on both sides so either both exhaust manifolds failed simultaneously or it came in through the carburetor one thing I'm thinking I'm going to do would like to look at the cylinders again at least a few of them if the exhaust manifolds are leaking I should see water in those cylinders and I I suspect it's not the exhaust manifold come to think of it cuz he said this thing ran fine all season this is something that happened while it was in storage so the exhaust manifolds they would leak while they're in use not um not while it's in storage so yeah I don't know like I said I don't know anything about boats but the sucker runs still can't believe it okay I am going to scope the four easiest cylinders to get to where the plugs aren't blocked by this and um I want to see if there's any water in there that'll tell me it's coming from the exhaust manifold uh and also I just want to see how the cylinder walls look well it certainly looks a lot better see if I can get back and look at the valve and there are the valves those look pretty good I mean yeah I mean that's such a huge Improvement there's no water on the cylinder a little bit of oil no surprise Cylinder 6 was right at the top so I barred the engine over to put it down there's still some oil in there there's a lot of staining it looks kind of rough but compared to before this looks so much better for comparison this is the first time I scoped this cylinder the engine was still locked up when I did this that looks horrid and I scoped two more cylinders on the other side of the engine these are the four cylinders that the spark plugs aren't horrible to get out uh the others I'm going to leave alone so overall none of them look great but honestly I think this is going to clean up with use and get better with use and uh it's running so well I think you ought to just run it I don't see any evidence of water in these things I really think it came through through the carburetor but I'm not sure about that and I know there's a lot of guys out there that have a lot of experience with these engines what do you guys think since I'm here I'm going to go ahead and check the compression I suspect it's going to be fine because uh the thing runs pretty [Music] well about 110 just shy a 120 and we'll we'll go ahead and check the second hole here better on that one 130 so I suspect this is all going to improve but I am curious like mechanics out there I almost feel like putting um this is crazy to even say but putting something abrasive into the the cylinder and letting it kind of grind itself a little bit um almost seems like it would help all that pitting and everything from the water being in there with at least turn into a more smooth cylinder and that said probably just leave it alone is the thing to do and let it wear itself in I think it'll get better with time realistically I think I think he ought to just go ahead and change out the uh all the the gaskets on the exhaust manifolds and but I'm I'm probably going to leave that for him to do I've had enough with whack-a-mole all right I'm curious to see how this thing cranks now I've got it in the off position so it's not going to start but let's just see if it cranks [Music] better I mean I guess it's a little better now let's see if it'll start starts right up [Music] well that thing really runs amazingly well what do you think should I put it in the water all I have is my pond around here that would be actually uh kind of funny and kind of ridiculous there you go guys actually got that thing running again uh I'm really I'm really surprised and uh pretty gratifying to save this thing from the scrap Heap I'm curious you know a regular mechanic would they have gone that far or would they have just said you need an engine rebuild or you need a new engine uh as soon as they saw that engine was locked up and there was rust in the cylinders there's still some more work to do on it the exhaust manifolds probably ought to be changed and it probably needs a general tuneup some fresh fuel in the tank wouldn't hurt either but at this point I'm going to quit while I'm ahead I'm done playing with whack-a-mole I'm giving it back to my brother he can take over from here we're going to go on to the next project thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next one and I'm sure someone will ask why don't I just use my truck I could put it in the pond with my truck I'd never get it out there's no ramp you have to pull it up a a big rise and my truck would just spin no chance cold this morning [Music] [Music]

Channel: FarmCraft101

Views: 483,510

Keywords: 454 engine, chevy big block, engine locked up, locked up engine, mercruiser 454, mercruiser, no crank, engine won't crank, no spark, crank no spark, 454 big block, engine repair, big block, locked up engine fix

Id: A6DU_vTt7oc

Length: 103min 49sec (6229 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024