1955 CC Hurricane Restoration

You are the man, and that is one beautiful piece of work. I am glad I got to see in person. Maybe one day I will get a ride or even better a pull.

81nautique wrote: phatsat67 wrote: Alan, what do the hemi guys tell you? About 4200 WOT ? Not an issue Zach, Later 354ci 275 Hp hemi's were turning 4400, same bottom end. A little bit more compression and a lot more carb was the main difference.

That should sound good

Got to play with the Hurricane a little bit this weekend, This run was with a 12x13 Oj prop. 4400 rpm and 45 mph.   We made a 21 mile run up river so 42 mile round trip with out a hitch. The boat is just running very nice right now and think I can say I no longer worry about it breaking down. That river can be a dangerous place if you lose power but I think that worry is behind us now. In fact we went back out last night and I forgot my tool bag !!

So here's a quick little video   , I promise one of these days we'll have a chase boat and we'll get some footage other than a POV reference, most likely green lake will produce something decent. Turn it up and enjoy.

Who is that skinny kid driving your boat?

jimsport93 wrote: Who is that skinny kid driving your boat?

I was thinking the same thing! Sheezus!

Well it's been almost a year since I've updated this thread and since our last outing down at the River Ruckus in Florida there is a lot to report.

First off the rumors are true..We got towed in.    After three days and about 60 miles of river running I heard a squelling noise, metal to metal, not a pleasant sound at all.. Sounded like it was coming from the rear of the engine, I thought possibly transmission or generator but could not determine what it was. We still had oil pressure but we decided to shut it off and get it on the trailer and back to Paramores where we could diagnose it further.

The next day Dana and I relaunched the boat, it started up fine and teh noise was gone but so was the oil pressure, ZERO. Crap, shut it down and made a phone to my machinist engine guy and his first thought was that we spun a bearing. So we loaded up and headed home a few days later.

With Todd W's help we got the boat off the trailer and proceeded to pull the motor.


Started tearing it apart and yesterday got to the root of the problem.   The Hemi is built like a tank and to even get the oil pan off I had to tear the trans and gearbox off to get at 2 bolts that attach the oil pan from the back of the engine.





Once flipped over I removed the oil pump it was apparent what went wrong. The oil pump shaft ceased in it's housing.    I removed all the caps both main and rod and there was no visible damage. The crank might still need to be turned but it looks pretty darn good as it sits, the bearings were scuffed as it did run for just a short time without oil pressure but I guess we shut it off in time to catch any real damage.


Those lines on the journals are just oil not scuffs.

Now for the good stuff. here is a picture of the oil pump shaft.


And here is a picture of the mating intermediate shaft...or whats left of it.

yes that is the mating end of the shaft ground to dust.   The oil pump shaft must have bound up and the weakest part in the system let go, that shaft is completely pulverized.

$9.95

So here's what the machinist and I think happened. First off this motor has been rebuilt as the pistons are .060 oversized. I don't know who rebuilt it but they made one fatal $9.95 mistake.

On the rear main cap there is a hollow alignment dowel that MUST be in place when you install that cap.   That dowel lines the oil pump shaft up with the intermediate distributor drive shaft.   The dowel was missing so the main cap was installed out of alignment and the oil pump shaft was binding, we ran it long enough that it finally over heated and seized.

This is a picture of the intermediate shaft, notice how hot the casting got.


The oil pump shaft is bent but I'm not sure if that happen before or during the meltdown.

In any case we know what happened and I think we know the cause so a total rebuild is in order.

Most parts have been sourced and I'm working with a local machine shop that does a lot of marine engine work. A few major improvements I'm going to do is replace the pistons and up the CR from stock 7.2:1 to just under 9:1. I'll send the cam out and have it reground to a proven marine spec that I got from another reputable builder.   The third piece I was going to do was have the heads reconditioned and have the larger performance valves dropped in but in measuring everything up yesterday I found the heads have already been upgraded, most likely with the last rebuild so they will get inspected and, cleaned and reassembled.    With these few changes we have no doubt the HP will be in the 275-300 range up from the stock 200. Should be a lot of fun once I get all those parts back in the boat.

More pictures as things progress

Damn.....all damage could have been spared for under 10 bucks....that just sucks!! sorry Alan! but I'm sure this only gives you a reason to build it like you wanted to in the first place!!

Good to hear no major damage to the rare Hemi parts. It'll surely run forever after this rebuild and much faster haha.

Ugh that sucks so much.

RainDog wrote: And I was the one crying in my beer at lunch with you on Saturday about my Velvet Drive dying after an estimated 3000 hours. You should have slapped me... Is a crack in the block like that typically repairable?

Ha, That's why I let you buy lunch!!

I'll know better Wednesday when I drop the block off at Kim's.   I've seen much worse repaired but I 'll have to defer to the experts on this one. I sure the hell hope so.

Pete, For the record I've been talking to Kim over at Auto Machine in St. Charles,   They are the guys that bought all the old Gray marine stuff years ago. I met Steve over there Saturday and took a look around. Two brothers who have both been at this for 40 years each, They seem to know their way around this stuff.   Jim Staib recommended them because" there's no one there under 60!"

Saturday they were machining v6 race engines from solid blocks of aluminum. He had 4 complete blocks done ready for sleeves and 2 more to go. Pretty impressive work.

I was having a really great day today and then I followed this thread. It was truly painful. I am so sorry. This will be on my mind for a long time, I will not forget it even after its up and running again.

8122pbrainard wrote: Alan, Getting that shaft out looks interesting too. I'd say it will need to be bored out since it sure looks like it's friction welded itself in becoming one with the block!

Pete, The shaft is actually free but the end is mushroomed so it won't slide out without some work. I think it might be easier to cut the shaft in the center and slide it out from both ends. I could do it but decided to leave it in there so the machinist could see exactly what happened.   They probably could make short work of it with a die grinder whereas I would spend 2 hours on it and mess things up worse than they are.

Sorry to hear that, Alan. That part is probably in someone's tool box and they've been wondering where it should have gone since the rebuild.

Damnit

Well sadly I have to report that we've made zero progress on the engine. It's been at the machine shop for 5 weeks today and they haven't been able to get to it yet. I am picking it up today and moving it to another shop.

Ultimately what I've decided to do is stick with my original plan which was to have Van Ness Engineering in NJ rebuild the short block for me. I backed away from that plan because he's so far away but in the past month of researching the knowledge base and parts sources for the Hemi Van Ness keeps coming to the top of the list.   Most of the parts I need would be coming from him anyway so when we really got down to talking about cost it made sense to just send him the motor.

Van Ness has built over a dozen of these marine Hemis, knows them inside and out and has or will procure or make any parts needed, Main problem I was finding is that there are several guys that have Hot rod knowledge for the Hemis but much of it just doesn't translate over to the marine side, I got advice and parts recommendations from one end of the spectrum to the other not trusting any of it. I was actually able to talk cam specs with Van Ness because he's reground and tested a dozen or so cams where anybody else was selling me off the shelf auto cams. It started to become a cluster of information that was valid in other applications but mine so I pulled the plug.

As much as I wanted to build it myself the reality is I just don't have time this year so in a few months I'll get the short block back and a couple of weekends of work we'll be back on the water. I'm hoping for end of summer test run. Gonna be a long summer without the Hurricane running but that's the way it goes I guess.   Plan is to be back down for next years river run, we'll see!