Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Going to send him copies of the CDs as a thank you.....although its tragic that GM dropped the LT-5. Although would weall be here today ...bench racing, and talking about the mystery of the LT-5 if it had continued?

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Wow, you seem to be spending a lot of time on this.

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Good stuff, Lee!!!

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Very cool information! Thanks for sharing with the rest of us :handshak:

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Good stuff! What about having some of the MM folks come to ZR-1/BG gathering next year? Have a discussion and Q&A session with them. Maybe a carrot is to have the Registry pay for their transportation and R/B?? Just a thought

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

I'd be down with spending registry funds on that. Heck even if we had to pass the hat, I'd throw in some cash. Okay, a BFO just hit me. :o Does the registry contribute to travel expenses for people that we have speak to us at our gatherings? I know, I'm clueless...but humor me.:redface:

Hey lee, thanks man for taking the time to run down this stuff for us. :handshak:

I learned a little something from one of the points about oil....should have listened to the original owner of my car and it follows what info was floating around back in the 70's when syn oils first came on to the market. Oh well.

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Aparently there were a few MM guys at this last gathering, a missed opportunity to capture some of the legacy...I agree would be cool.

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Hey Lee, I was thinking about point #12 on your list.

My thoughts are that we have a lot of chefs because no one would help officially, or could maybe? So the guys that really tinker with these motors had to do reverse engineering all by themselves because GM kept all their knowledge close to the vest? Hence we have a lot of chefs?

Speaking for myself. I know I don't know much, and would sure welcome the information that the MM crew would like to share....at least we would be getting something from people that had resources at their disposal and had to solve stuff that came up during practical application....they weren't just drawing blue prints and making prototype motors.

I mean this as truly just speaking what's going thru my own head. I'm not trying to be a wise guy, and I'm not intending to disrespect any of our chefs.

Jingle Bells!
:cheers:
Tom

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

It sounds like they had a lot of ideas that fell on deaf ears......you can tell these guys really have passion and pride in their work, thats why I think its important to capture their story, the plant is going to close completely soon with ops moving to WI.

Re: Mercury Marine plant question
 

Nice Thread.

Really enjoyed it.

Thanks for posting. Obviously, this was my favorite esp. point 12:

Here's some of our discussion:

1)Dyno numbers....varied from 350hp to 400hp on the early motors, most of this had to do with ring seal/break in.....they said it takes 10-15K before a motor really was broken in and rings seated. GM has a % guideline that is accepted from engine to engine.

-He said compression was 210 pre break in but was well into the mid to upper 200s after break in

-Cam timing issue was also discussed

2)Early rings were a problem with blow by, 93-95 rings fixed that issues
-He mentioned if you used Mobile 1 to break in the engine, there seemed to be issues...regular oil seemed to be better in the first 15K miles.

-Also talked about Lotus not using exhaust valve seals
**It really seems that there were differences in opinion between the Lotus engineers and the guys at MM who had practical experience.
There is a bigger story to be told than what is in the HOB,

3)Cam shaft failures....more to it than someone at the plant over revving the motor....there was nearly "0" clearance on the cams, creating an oiling issues...this was fixed....many of the spare motors floating around were the motors with cam clearance issues.

4)The reason for the 8K RPM is not the chains, its the oil pan which would pressurize the motor, pushing all of the oil to the top of the motor, leading to overheating of bearings....7600rpm is the top sustained RPM.....attempts at 8K melted the bearings on some motors.

5)They did a "progressive" porting test starting at the air horn and recorded results as they moved throught the TB, Plenum, heads, etc. He has these recorded somewhere.

6)The oiling system actually creates a vacuum below 4500 and above 4500 it starts pushing everything to the top half of the motor, i will get more info on this

7)They did a lot of cam timing and cam testing on cars, they evenbuilt 3 race motors with solid lifter cams.

8)Apparently they too ruined a few heads porting them, to solve the issue they cut a few open to see where the ports were in relation to the cooling and oiling passages.

9)Only thing left over at the factory at this point is the dyno panels...the actual dynos are gone.

10)Still people with spare parts out there, DIS modules,prototype parts, etc.

11)There is no agreement with MM staff that prohibits them from discussing

12)He recalled 30 thou was the most a head could be milled, more than that allowed the chain to come loose.

12)I invited him to visit the registry and will be calling him back to do a more formal interview....he said he got out his thunder at stillwater tape and watched it after my note....you can really hear the passion these people have in their job. He told me he is not sure if he will visit the forum as there are alot of Chefs in the kitchen out there and it irritates him to hear people talk about things they really don't understand.



Rick :usa: