318 marine motors?

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discharger1332

discharger1332

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a buddy of mine just bought a 57 CHRIS CRAFT day cruiser boat. it has twin 318's (i think) in it. they are definately s/b l.a series mopar motors. wondering if anyone knows anything about theese motors, is there any difference between them and the 318 in my van? they have a weird box behind the dist. that says chrysler electronic 225 on top with a big red reset button. other than that they look vary similar. ive heard chrysler marine motors are heavy duty versions of the car motors. not sure how true this is, any help is greatly appreciated.
cheers
 
it is so that the propellers turn in opposite directions in order to keep the boat from walking to one side
 
805moparkid said:
haha... boat anchors... haha

all that needs to be said...
Click to expand...

so a 318 is a boat anchor; grow up kid.

One engine runs in reverse, to stop the torque. The cam and dist and starter or different.
And the carb is diff, and dist, no vacuum.
 
green1 said:
so a 318 is a boat anchor; grow up kid.

One engine runs in reverse, to stop the torque. The cam and dist and starter or different.
And the carb is diff, and dist, no vacuum.
Click to expand...

I've heard that Dual rotation also helps to park the boat at the dock.
 
A lot of boat motors(GM/Chrysler/who ever) have water cooled exhaust manifolds. Some are set up for magnetos some have better seals and most have a slight change in the metals to fight corrosion. Like the Canadian motors have a higher nickel count to help with the hot engine and the very cold air.
 
If your buddy is thinking about pulling them out, he will miss them dearly. Alot of boat mech guys say they would kill to have a chrysler powered boat over anything as how easy they are to work on. got any pics of the boat?
Sorry to hijack
 
green1 said:
so a 318 is a boat anchor; grow up kid.

One engine runs in reverse, to stop the torque. The cam and dist and starter or different.
And the carb is diff, and dist, no vacuum.
Click to expand...

im sorry, i dont think they are but was refereing to the great thread awhile back about 318's being boat anchors cuz there short ci compared to a 340 or 360...

and for the reverse roation motors isnt the cam just have a different lobe pattern so the engine is still running the same, just opposite direction
 
There's different ways to reverse an engine. One way is to use a gear drive and reverse the cam. Of course the water pump, starter, etc have to be reversed

Some older boats with ONE engine used reverse rotation, I don't know why, unless the boat manufacturer had left- over left hand engines

One year someone turned in an "exchange" core out of a boat, and no one noticed--or said--that it was reversed. I ended up looking it over, and of course the rebuilder had put stock auto/ light truck stuff in the engine, turning it into a standard rotation engine, but the starter, etc was still the WRONG direction.

The other thing about a leftie is that some have oil slinger groves in the crank to encourage oil to remain in the main seal. Now that we have an auto crank in a leftie engine, this means the grooves on a stock crank do not throw oil back into the seal,

AND IT ALSO MEANS that the poor dumb farmer who got that marine leftie crank in his old Ford Y block pickup always wondered why the rear main leaked oil
 
The box behind the distributor is the ignition box. The red reset button is the circuit breaker for the charging system, The voltage regulator is also on the same panel behind the distributor. 225 is the horsepower rating. The std rotation engine is just a heavy duty truck long block with all the marine stuff (big cast aluminum oil pan, water cooled exhaust, water pumps, angled intake) bolted to it. Everything in the reverse rotation engine is the same as the std engine but spins backwards, the crank has the grooves for the the rear main seal that are cut backwards and the pistons are in backwards.
Hopefully these engines aren't salt water cooled or they will be boat anchors. Make sure to bring the vaseline when buying parts, everything marine costs about 3x more than the automotive equivelant.
 
My grandpa had a 1966 house boat with one old style (1965) 318 (bought it back in '70-'71).......it always ran great but one of the heads cracked. Got another head for it. It definitely had that boat moving pretty dam fast8) I wish he still had it but he had to sell it 6 or 7 years ago because the price of gas was getting ridiculous. He loved that boat, my father loved that boat and I loved that boat. He sold it to Sea Tow (they work along the Hudson River) and I heard that there using it as an office. At least they didn't scrap it:cheers:

*heads didn't crack, they corroded away from the salt water*
 
The engine in my coronet is a marine 318, that was fresh water only and reverse rotation. I forget what the builder messed up but the first time he delivered it, it leaked oil like a sieve- because he forgot to correct something for reverse rotation. He fixed it at his own cost, when it was all done it was a good running motor, but it now has a bad thrust bearing so I have to pull it out soon.
 
67Dart273 said:
There's different ways to reverse an engine. One way is to use a gear drive and reverse the cam. Of course the water pump, starter, etc have to be reversed

Some older boats with ONE engine used reverse rotation, I don't know why, unless the boat manufacturer had left- over left hand engines

One year someone turned in an "exchange" core out of a boat, and no one noticed--or said--that it was reversed. I ended up looking it over, and of course the rebuilder had put stock auto/ light truck stuff in the engine, turning it into a standard rotation engine, but the starter, etc was still the WRONG direction.

The other thing about a leftie is that some have oil slinger groves in the crank to encourage oil to remain in the main seal. Now that we have an auto crank in a leftie engine, this means the grooves on a stock crank do not throw oil back into the seal,

AND IT ALSO MEANS that the poor dumb farmer who got that marine leftie crank in his old Ford Y block pickup always wondered why the rear main leaked oil
Click to expand...

A friend of mine found out the hard way about one engine needing to be reverse rotation on a twin boat, he installed two std rotation engines and the boat would only go in circles, you have to have a counter rotating engine when you have two to cancel out the torque effect
 
wow< this is all great info guys, thank you. i will get some pix today when i am down there. both motors run great, mainly just wondering about parts interchangeability. fuel pump just went out on right motor, can i use a std one, or do i need to use a special one?
 
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