496HO to 502

[gcarter]

Glen, I'm not trying to influence you one way or the other, but, as I mentioned above, Minicraft's gel is at, or under
$300.00/per gallon. You'd have your gel that you want, and it'd match.
OTOH, high end paint is going to cost a similar amount including the various chemicals that are required.
The obvious advantages of gel were outlined by you above, but it is more labor intensive than paint to apply and finish.
Paint, though, is "as finished" when it's applied properly saving many hours of labor, but it has a definite "in water" life expectancy.
But consider the price of the materials will be similar.

[yeller]

You make a good point George.....but so does Bill. I always thought about 3 days was max a painted boat could stay in the water.


Fired the boat up again yesterday. Newly rebuilt altenator didn't work. It seemed to be working when I first fired the boat up, but after a few minutes it died. Will have to take it back tomorrow.

Checked the fault codes on the computer and I had a Low water temp and Low MAP sensor voltage fault. I cleared the codes, ran the motor and they didn't reappear, so they may have been old faults. The MAP fault may have happened when I had the ignition on for a while without the MAP connected. That situation caused my alarm to beep.
The low water temp fault makes no sense to me.

I ran the engine without a thermostat, but the temperature still creeped up. Even though it was running at only 1000rpm, temp still got to about 175~180, then the alarm went off again. I'm a bit confused at this point because it didn't register any faults in the ECM.
As far as I know, there are 3 things that set off a steady alarm (with a MEFI 3). Low drive fluid, Low oil pressure, and High water temperature. Drive fluid was fine. Oil pressure was good. So that only leaves the water temperature........but if it was high temp that set the alarm, I would think it should register a high temp fault.


Regardless of what the alarm was for, I have to solve the overheating problem. I'm either not getting enough circulation through the motor, or the heat exchanger isn't doing its job. If it's a circulation issue, there are two things that come to mind.
One; I'm using an electric circulation pump and I didn't test it before I installed it. It does run, but I don't know how well it is moving the water.
Two: typically there is a t-stat bypass hose that runs from just below the t-stat to the top of the pump. I don't really know what that is for, but I always assumed it was to allow the pump to circulate water when the t-stat was closed. I do know that some types of pumps can be damaged if they are running but can't circulate water. I figured engine circ pumps are like this. The electric pump I have, does not have a place for this bypass hose, so I plumbed it so the hose runs (from below the t-stat) to the inlet side of the pump. I am guessing, that it may possible, too much water is circulating through this bypass hose and not enough through the heat exchanger.

If it's not one of those two possibilities, then I may have to try a different heat exchanger.

[BUIZILLA]

Jamie at Lakeside had the same temp issue with a 425HO and it had something to do with the exhaust hose routing ? and a sensor combination ? can't remember.... it was with a Dana exhaust though, same issue

[CHACHI]

Jamie at Lakeside had the same temp issue with a 425HO and it had something to do with the exhaust hose routing ? and a sensor combination ? can't remember.... it was with a Dana exhaust though, same issue

Was that Undertakers boat? He has Danas I beleive and 425hp.

Ken

[undertaker]

Yep that was my boat....When Jaime installed my Danas I was getting an alarm for water temperature when I ran the boat hard, he put my motor on his laptop and found out the starboard side exhaust was running hotter than the port side after the Dana install (dont really remember why). So what he did was put a adjustable valve on the starboard side exhaust hose underneath the exhaust manifold and made little adjustments to it while he ran the boat until he got a balance temp on both sides of the manifolds. Have not had an issue with temp since the mod was made.

Its been 7 or 8 yrs since I installed the danas so to be honest I dont remember ALL the little details, since I did not do the install or mod....and I am not a motor head like most on this board

Any questions shoot me a PM Yeller be glad to help in anyway I can....

Undertaker

[RickSE]

Don't worry about the long tabs. I put 280's on our boat and don't have any issues. It does take a lot less tab down to get the same results as the shorter tabs.

[yeller]

Thanks for the explanation Undertaker. Temperature balance doesn't seem to be an issue in my case. I can easily put my hand on any of the header tubes when it's running, so there is good water flow and balance on the raw water side.

The closed cooling system I have isn't a factory set up. It's something I pieced together myself. I don't "see" anything wrong with how I set it up......but that doesn't mean I didn't do something incorrectly.

[undertaker]

Yeller, hope you get things sorted out....Good Luck

[yeller]

Didn't realize it's been a year since I posted any update.
Well.....the saga continues

Just when I thought I was ready to fire it up and test the boat again, I found out my intercooler is shot. I was sure it was good, but I before I reinstalled it, I thought I'd pressure test it. Put it in a tub of water and pumped the water side with air....and a mini jacuzzi started.

Absolutely sucks that I have to get a new one, but on the positive side, good thing I tested it. This was the exact failure on the 496HO that started this whole thing.
Procharger intercoolers are incredibly expensive, so I ordered a replacement from frozenboost.
https://www.frozenboost.com/air_wate...3ed0620854be45
It should be here before the weekend. It's not anywhere near the same mounting configuration, so I'll have to fab something up and it's going to look ugly as chit when installed, but I believe the procharger unit is around 2G's....and I didn't want to spend that.

If all goes right.......which nothing has so far.....I'll be testing this weekend.

[yeller]

So......what have I been doing for the last year?

I've been mostly working on upgrading the cooling system.
http://www.donzi.net/forums/showthre...elp&highlight=

As shown in the above link, I purchased a larger HE.

HE.jpg

I had it clean, pressure tested and larger (raw water) I/O's installed.....and of course painted.

HE2.jpg

Of course nothing is straight plug n play and it wouldn't fit where the previous one was, so I had to make a new mounting bracket and install it in a different location.

Bracket1.jpg Bracket2.jpg Bracket3.jpg HE3.jpg

In the 1st pic of the (yellow) HE you can see the raw water inlet is a 90 degree fitting. When I did a trial fit of everything, I couldn't route the hose properly because the Intercooler was in the way, so in the last pic, you can see I had a different fitting installed.

Then.....because I'm cheap....I made my own recovery bottle. I took a water bottle I had lying around, added a fitting at the bottom to connect to the HE coolant tank, as well as add a vent on top. I then cut some angle aluminum to make the mounting bracket.

Overflow1.jpg Overflow2.jpg


???? Don't know why some of my pics are posting sideways or upside down? Never had this problem before.

[yeller]

To add to the cooling discussion from before........I think I was wrong about my alarm going off because of overheating.
I believe it was going off because my altenator wasn't charging. Apparently, the MEFI 3 will set an alarm if the voltage goes low for (I think it is) 3 minutes. I confused it with overheating, because the alarm would go off at the same temperature, every time. I'm thinking that the alarm wasn't going off at the same temperature. It's just that the motor would always reach about the same temp after 3 minutes of running.
This theory of mine makes a lot more sense because:
A: Temp was only about 180 when alarm went off.
B: MEFI didn't store any temp alarm....or any alarm
C: My altenator wasn't charging and my batteries are old and weak, and weren't holding a charge very well.

I won't know for sure until I fire it up again, but I did find a poor altenator connection in the exciter wire which would explain my altenator problems.

Although I don't think I was setting a high temp alarm, I still had an overheating problem and needed to upgrade the HE.

[yeller]

I ended up painting my transom (instead of gel). The plan was; painting would be less work.

Again......nothing on this boat goes as planned.

At the risk of embarrassing myself, I'm posting pics of my crappy paint job.
I was way to anxious too get it done and although I didn't have the right tip for my gun, I masked everything off and painted anyways.

In the second pic you can see the massive orange peeling from laying on the paint too thick.

Paint1.jpg Paint2.jpg

Instead of a light sanding as would be normal for paint, I had to knock it down with 320, then I progressed to 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000. Sure glad it was a small area.
1st pic is after the 320. 2nd pic is after 3000. Although it doesn't show real well, you can see the shine coming up in pic 2. (Yellow doesn't show reflections nearly as well as dark colors)

Paint3.jpg Paint4.jpg

Color match isn't as good as I would like. I took the back seat storage cover to a paint shop and they got a 96% color match, but when I put the color sample to the hatch (in the sun) it looked too orangy. I found a color sample that looked dead on and used that instead. Once I painted it though, it's more yellow than the gel (and a bit pale). The "too orangy" color probably would have been spot on.
I was going to repaint, but the wife threatened to me if I did. She said I'm too picky and I need to just get the boat finished. The saving grace, is I only painted the transom, so the right angle paint/gel line ends up looking like a shading difference.
This pic shows the difference. You can notice it more towards the bottom......as well as where a burnt through the paint. Maybe I'll repaint in the winter...

Paint5.jpg

Edit: DAMN!! This picture posting is pissing me off. Never had an issue ever. This is the first time I'm posting with Windows 8.1, so maybe that's the difference.

[yeller]

As posted in this thread:
http://www.donzi.net/forums/showthre...ube&highlight=
I installed an aeration tube on the BlackHawk and also found I had a damaged (brass) clutch ring on one of the gears.

$230 later for a pinion depth tool, I have the gears set up and the drive reinstalled. I was going to use the driveshaft/yolk from the Bravo 1x because it has a much beefier yolk and u-joints, but that didn't pan out.
I knocked the yolk off the 1x driveshaft to make it easier to set up the gear lash, but in doing so, I damaged the c-clips for the u-joint. (Stupid me...I should have used the yolk from the BH driveshaft).

Of course, as is typical with how things are going.....you can't get new clips.
The 1x u-joints do not cross reference with anything else out there. The good guys at Pat's Driveline near me, spent close to an hour looking through every catalog, but couldn't find a matching u-joint or cap that used the same clips.
Sooo......$325 for a single u-joint. What an absolute, intentional, price gouge. Thank you very much Mercury. (Can't seem to find "the finger" icon.)
That is why I put the BH driveshaft back in.

Anyways...drive is done and installed......and now I think the aeration tube is going to be a wasted project. I think I jumped the gun on doing it and it won't end up being necessary, or help. We'll see. I'll run it plugged and unplugged to see if it makes any difference.

[yeller]

A small change for piece of mind was altering the water connection from my headers to the divertors.

Previously, the two water tubes didn't line up and I didn't like the stress it put on the connection hose. It concerned me that it wouldn't last.

Headers1.jpg

So I cut the tube off the header and had it welded on at a different angle so it lined up better with the divertor. I'm more comfortable with the connection now.

Headers2.jpg Headers3.jpg Headers4.jpg

[yeller]

Also did a minor change to the trailer.
Besides, lowering the bunks 2" (just because I could ), I modified the winch tower to make it easier to climb onto the bow of the boat.
I stole this idea from Buizilla. I cut the part of the winch support that stuck above the winch and topped it with an aluminum plate. This effectively lowers my stepping point 8" and will help a lot. Thanks Buizilla.

Winch post1.jpg Winch post2.jpg Winch post3.jpg