SSM manifolds, 502

[zelatore]

I finally finished up my exhaust installation. Between only being home a couple days a week; a vacation trip; other jobs; some unexpected fabrication; and just plain old laziness, it took about a month to do what should have taken a weekend.

First, the ‘before’ pics. It’s a 2001 22 classic. All stock Merc 502 with Corsa quick ‘n quiet diverters. The only oddity is my home-made mounting bracket for the fresh water flush attached to the top of the starboard elbow.

[zelatore]

Then I stripped it down. Everything came off pretty easy; no seized bolts or anything. Even the hoses came free pretty well. The hardest part was getting the tips out of the transom. The silicon had them glued in pretty well. I ended up having to take a block of wood and a short 5 lb hammer to break them free. I also removed the dual batteries at this time since I’m also replacing the plastic Gill battery hold-downs with Stainless Steel Marine parts and the extra working room is always a plus.

[zelatore]

The old parts were rusty and making a mess in the bilge, but not leaking or causing damage. For me, this upgrade is partially cosmetic, and partially laying the groundwork for a potential power-adder in the future. Any performance gain from the exhaust alone will be minimal I’m sure and purely a bonus.

[zelatore]

And the new parts – All Stainless Steel Marine stuff from ‘Poodle. I don’t have the numbers as I forgot to weigh them before installation, but I’d estimate half the weight. The old risers alone feels as heavy as the new manifold. Maybe more.

[zelatore]

The parts arrived well packed in fully foamed boxes, but I did find a couple minor nicks in the manifold to head seating surfaces. I don’t think it was from shipping, and they were very minor. I dressed them with a file a bit (probably not necessary).

[zelatore]

Up to this point, I’m only in the job a couple hours of easy work. I spent a little more time cleaning up the bilge while I had better access. This would later prove to be a pointless exercise…

The fun starts now! Thread in the included plastic hose fittings and plugs and bolt it up….how hard can it be? The starboard side manifold went on easy with the included hardware.

[zelatore]

The port side however, didn’t fit. I’d have to move the drive reservoir.

With the reservoir removed, I still couldn’t get things lined up. I eventually cut the heads off two of the old manifold bolts and threaded them into the head as a guide to keep the (included) gasket in place while I tried to get a couple bolts started. Then I realized my oil filter bracket was still interfering with the manifold. The down-turned part of the bracket that the reservoir bolted to was in the problem. First I tried to just trim off a little and leave the mounting points for the reservoir. Break out the dremal tool!

[zelatore]

When that didn’t work, I realized the reservoir was going to have to go. That meant cutting off the reservoir mounts and finding someplace else to mount it later. If I’m going to go that far, I might as well trim the whole bracket back closer to the oil filter since the only reason to have it sticking out there was to support the reservoir anyway. That much cutting meant breaking out the air tools and a bigger cut-off wheel. A little while later, and a bit of touch-up paint, and there’s now plenty of clearance.

[zelatore]

I stuck in the new tips at this point. I didn’t need to change these, but I wanted to go to internal flappers and no baffles. Of course, (and Poodle warned me about this in advance) the new tips’ bolts didn’t quite line up with the old ones, and worse yet they weren’t quite into fresh material either. I epoxied up the old holes, stuck the new tips in to mark the new holes, and drilled for ¼”-20 thru-bolts (not included). I believe I used 3” Phillips flat-heads. I drilled a small 1/8” pilot hole first since I knew the bit would want to off-track due to the different hardness of the epoxy vs the fiberglass. A little bit of a PITA, but nothing unusual.

The new tips went in with a healthy dose of white silicon as did the mounting bolts. No pics; pretty straight forward stuff.

[zelatore]

With the tips and the manifolds in place, I could re-use the original exhaust hose and Corsa diverters. Unfortunately, they didn’t exactly drop in. A lot of force was required to get flex over the short lengths of hose, and I had to bottom out the diverters against both the tips and the elbows inside the hose to get the risers to come close to lining up on the manifolds. Two people would have helped a lot here, as I was using two hands and a foot to try to wrestle the riser down onto the (included) gasket, keep everything straight, and get the clamp started to pull it all together. Not an easy task, and a bit of swearing might have been involved, but it went together. If you look closely, you can see that the lower hose from the diverter to the Y pipe is tweaked pretty hard as things don’t exactly line up. I was worried about this sealing, and I did have a small leak on the port side upon start-up. I think it might have helped some if I’d back-tracked and cut a little bit (3/8”?) off the forward end of the diverter for some added clearance. I also took this time to find a place to re-mount the Corsa circuit breaker. I ended up flattening it out, shooting it with a quick coat of paint, and attaching it to one of the solenoid mounting bolts on the diverter itself. It doesn’t look great there, but it works fine.

[zelatore]

Back to that reservoir problem….

I made a simple bracket out of scrap I had on-hand. I bent a piece of 1/8” steel into a U with one leg longer than the other and tacked a couple bolts to the long leg. I stuck a piece of the same steel on the back side to give it some support and tacked a small ‘lip’ to onc side while cutting a notch on the other to accommodate the stock rubber strap to hold the tank. A jig saw took care of the half-round cutout in the bottom to make room for the electrical and feed hose hook-up. A little primer, a little paint, and there it is. Please don’t mock my welding….this stupid thing took me hours to make since I have the welding skills of a 2nd grader.

The bracket bolted into a couple of holes that were pre-drilled in the riser’s accessory plate. An L shaped bracket was included with the system that fit in this area, but it doesn’t seem to fit anything on my particular setup. Since I was mounting the reservoir bottle backwards, I extended the min – max lines around the back. I suspect I’ll make something new eventually as this bracket just touches the pvc valve.

[zelatore]

The risers had plates welded in place to accommodate the stock Merc ECU and cable brackets. The starboard side (cables) bolted on with new ¼-20 s/s bolts from the local hardware store, while the port side (ECU) required some small nylon stand-offs to fit properly. Again, just stuff I picked up locally.

The stock port side water hose from the T-stat housing to the bottom of the manifold was too short. Luckily it’s the same diameter as the hoses included to jumper the manifold to the risers, and those hoses are shipped extra-long and trimmed to fit, leaving plenty of extra hose to make an extension for the lower water hose. I picked up s/s clamps (6) and a nylon hose barb locally and everything fit together easily enough.

Sorry, no good pics of this stuff here at the office.

[zelatore]

That’s about it. I did have a small leak at the port side diverter to Y pipe hose due to the flex it’s under, but I sealed it with some silicon and it seems to be OK now. I may eventually replace the stock black rubber hose with some Trident blue hose – it’s much more flexible and might help with my alignment problem if the leak returns. If I had known what mods I’d need to make in advance, I could have knocked this out in a weekend easily. As it was, I had to work, stop, make things, run to the store, work, go on a trip, paint stuff, work, etc and it ended up taking me about a month to actually finish it up. It sounds great, but no performance test as yet since I’ve got several other things I’m planning to install such as mechanical indicators, a new dash, a replacement shift cable, and a Zieger dual ram steering system. At the above work pace, that should take about 2 years.

[kramsay1234]

I loved this read. i am thinking Stainless Marine for my boat and have the exact same motor as you. Want to come up to Toronto for a weekend and work it out for me since you know you can bang another one off in a weekend now...??

[penbroke]

Thanks for taking the time to post it.


Frank
Still looking...

[zelatore]

It's sort of like when Kieser was building the liberty ships. He got them down to where he could knock one out in almost no time by haveing all the parts pre-fab'ed and ready to go. If you knew what sort of little brackets and stuff you'd need to make and already had them done, it would go pretty quick. But if you work like most of us and just pick up a wrench and work until you hit a snag then stop to figure it out, it'll take a little longer :nilly:

And FWIW, I believe the brackets change pretty dramatically over the years so while yours may be similar, it probably won't be exaclty the same. But maybe this will at least give some idea.

Overall, I'm pleased with the equipment's build quality. I'd have liked it if they could have dialed in the mountings better, but of course that would mean a higher price as they'd have to make changes to accomodate each different year/setup.

[Lenny]

My experience(s) with SSM on SMALL BLOCKS was flawless. A fun thing to do in a couple hours (with a smarter friend ;) )

[RedDog]

Great post! And great work.

What year is your 502 Mag?

[zelatore]

2001.

Well, at least the boat's an '01; the engine doesn't actually have any serial numbers on it anywhere that I can find, and it's not exactly the 'stock' installation for an '01 classic since the engine is cradle mounted as pointed out by RickSE perviously.