Originally Posted By: Rick20
Tell us about your uncles boat. I am interested. I just saw an except from the Miami Boat show last night. A company has designed a propeller that has slide in foils on the prop blades.
As the motor wears and becomes less efficient you can slidge out the original foil and slide in a less aggressive one, so that it puts less strain on the motor. It really amounts to gearing down the drive train so that the motor works less. Of coarse the down side would be less top end speed and possibly less economy. But the engine life should be extended. Instead of spending the bucks to dry dock the yaught and change propellers, a diver can change the prop foils if you will in about 10 minutes.
My uncle and Father tossed in a Chevy I6 probably the last run of that engine about 12 years ago into an off shore ~25' fishing boat hull. My uncle reworked the entire boat, re-did the floors, stringers, built a cabin etc. His fiber glass work is un-real. Also the fact that this old Chevy engine is still running the way it does is impressive. The old Chevy engine works hard and is run sometimes over 3000 rpms for hours on end. It also idles a lot when drifting, in the event he has to move it quickly. Definitely old technology but that engine never skips a beat.
My uncle wanted to try a good additive to beef up the oil a bit, add some moly, ZDDP, and and get it to cling. He's staying clear of Lucas OT and STP, he figured Schaeffers #132 and a shot of some ZDDP would be the ticket. He likes to tweak his oils. He runs a "tweaked" diesel oil in there now, I'm just not sure of the brand or grade. It appears to be working, the engine runs like a top.
What sucks is those blocks/engines are getting very hard to come by, and since the engine is salt water cooled once the water jackets rot through that will be the end of that little I-6. It could be time for small diesel or a V8 engine.
We talk a lot about start up wear and running oil that's cold as being bad for an engine. The engine in this boat is run under the most stressful conditions, at times start stop cycles are very frequent depending on what fish we'd be going for, many times the engine never got to temp even after an 8 hour day, and several weeks worth of start stop cycles if we stayed in the bay. Compression is still within specs after 12 years of abuse since my uncle built that engine.
AD
