boat motors for cars?

i saw these two engines on the web tonight a 1957 olds and this 455.. both run..heres the question..can they be taken out and dropped in a 1956 oldsmobile...or do engines that have been reporposed for boats been altered to much..im just asking bunches of questions to widen my scope for a 1956 olds engine droppin.. thanks shane

 

helps if i actually post the pics...here they are

 

The early motor shown is not a 57....... It's a 303 or 324 block..... Can't see number on the heads ..... But those are 53 covers .....


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Well, they started out as car motors, shouldn't be any reason they couldn't be converted back. They no doubt have a bunch of 'marine' parts on them that will have to go, but most should be simple bolt-ons. Worst case is they're reverse rotation, which will mean a cam change and a starter at least, and if Olds motors have piston pin offset for thrust, new pistons.

Do make sure they're in good shape, as boat motors take a much harder pounding and if no heat exchanger is present, look closely at the water jackets.

 

I would only be worried that they have been hammered hard. How many boat owners with those types of motor are not at full throttle as often as they can be? I know I would thrash them.

 

also the cams on them are ussually made for a specific power band to be run at ( 3/4 to full throttle ) , and its narrow , below this band they are ussually lower torque , also you would want to check the valve springs too as they are ussually beat to hell from running at a constant speed , running a boat motor is like running against a water brake dyno all the time . most of the boat engines I have worked on , the cooling systems needs a through cleaning as its full of junk ****ed up and high mineral water coats the internals with crust .

 

Ditto stimpy,, great power range for a wrecker tho

 

That is where the 455 motor in our 68 Olds came from. Granted I knew the owner of the boat and what he had put in the motor. I also had an idea of how many hours were on the motor. That is the most important item with a boat motor. How many hours on the motor, and what kind of hull it's in. Also doesn't hurt to know what kind of water it was run in.

We had to swap over the pan, flywheel, thermostat housing and front timing cover. He was running a tunnel ram with dual fours, which we swapped out to run a dual plane Edelbrock intake for more manageable power band.

The only problem I ran into was the cam pulls really low vacuum at idle (but it sure sounds good). Was not enough to run the power brakes in traffic. So we had to add a reserve vacuum tank to the system which solved the problem of the brake going away at stop lights.

The good thing about the 455 boat motor, it was built to spin, so it has all the good stuff in it.

Cheers
RustyNCA

 

I know a lot of marine motors were counter rotaters,of the olds motors that is

 

another question answered...no boat motors for me...to many variables..

 

I would not shy away from a boat motor...they were made to run under constant HEAVY loads.

However, only 1 person here mentioned the most important issue...most boat motors run the opposite direction as car engines, so you will have to change the camshaft.

Other than that, they're typically very heavy duty engines.

Chris

 

So did I just get lucky? I didn't change anything internal on the motor I yanked from a jet boat?

 

More important, what's the deal on the 2 boats?

 

All jet boat motors are normal direction and as far as I know most all v drive were normal direction.Some vdrives were snout driven.Most of the time the motor is just turned around backwards in a vdrive.But one thing is for sure all boat motors are used hard and a 455 olds is the worse one to have as they have return oil problems.

Jake

 

Sometimes they turn backwards. Most of the time they want a cam change as they have a very narrow power band. Sometimes you have to change the water pump and liquid pickups to mate them to a radiator.

Always you have to look really close at the water jackets, a lot of boat motors are cooled with the water that they are running in and sometimes when they are not maintained well they are pretty cruddy.

 

Probably a wise decision in the long run.
As the guys said, that particular style of boat is usually run at 3/4 to full throttle and they are raw water cooling meaning that they draw their cooling water out of the lake, river, bay or what ever else they are run in.

Reverse rotation is usually but not always used in the second engine in a twin engine setup to keep the boat from prop walking due to two props turning in the same direction. Think trying to drive a hot rod with the rear end set in crooked so it wants to push to one side and you have to steer the car to counteract that. The reverse engine and prop counter acts the prop walk.