Trojan Boat Forum

Gents,

Little bit of background....when I started my starboard motor briefly a while back one of the things I did was check the oil and all looked good. The motor only ran for a short period to make sure there were no major problems. Everything was fine.

Now, I'm in the process of cleaning and painting everything. During that process I drained the oil and I noticed the oil appeared to have water in it. It was that mocha coffee brown and was very thick. That tells me water. The perplexing part is that there were no signs of this from when I started my motor before. But I can see how it could happen since this thing has been sitting for so long and when I started it up that's when the problem could have surfaced.

I've read about the problems of the water cross-over passages rusting on these so I investigated a little bit. Everything looked fairly decent but when I simply touched the intake gasket around the cross-over area the gasket broke off very easily because it was so dried out. I removed some of the gasket as you can see in the pics below and was surprised to find a rather large orifice. These holes are simply covered up by the gasket. There can’t really be any sealing effect because there is nothing on top of the gasket at this point. The gasket just covers the hole. I’ve played around with Chevy v-8’s before and have never seen this or an intake manifold that doesn’t cover the entire head surface.

These holes appear to be blind and do not go anywhere. They are just part of the head casting for some reason but they do not go down into the valley or anywhere.

My question is, does this look right? I plan on installing a new intake gasket. I’m thinking that since the gasket was so dried out the high probability is the sealing aspect of that cross-over is severely compromised. What say you?

This is where you mount a divorced choke for Qaudrajet carbs. Does not cover the opening but mounts in front of it to intake manifold. As engine heats spring turns taking choke off. On my old mopar marines I blocked them off for a slight performance increase.

Summit or Jegs sell a plate to block it.

Thanks guys, but I'm not referring to the choke mount. I know what that is I'm talking about the passage/hole on the heads. The pictures are from each side/head.

I remember that when I changed my intake gasket a couple of years ago. I'm pretty sure the new gasket will block off that area...

I seem to remember some metal built into the gasket which was the same shape as this area.


Bob

My Crusaders are basicly the same way and have been this way for years with no problem, I do think new gaskets will cover this opening but really do not seal it. The thing I am wondering is where did the water come from, I would check risers and elbows if theye are compromised the water could leak down the exhaust manifold into a cylinder and then the crankcase, is the engine raw water cooled possibly exhaust manifold, does it have a engine oil cooler, and possibly intake gaskets or head gaskets. Hope it is something easy.

I rebuilt my port 454 crusader 3 years ago and now my center ports are burning through and are opening up as yours have.. and now have an exhaust tick.. no water and shouldnt have.. you probably have an issue with you exhaust manifolds..ive been advised to use the crusader part# 30221 gasket set (ebay).. which i didnt use on the rebuild.. my starboard has 1500 hrs and has a very slight sign of burning after 12 years of use so i think with proper install (torqing) they will be fine.. hope that helps

He sold that beautiful 10 Meter years ago. Good info

Have the intake checked for trueness. A machine shop will be able check and machine the flange surface.