Well, I've been carefully going over the Lil Wake thread, and have gotten many good ideas from it. I will try to copy him as much as I can, and be sure to thank the guy for doing all the leg work on how to do this. I feel confident that it can be done, and done right.
I got the engine all hooked up in the exposed old hull. I want to test the heat exchanger before I proceed, so I can keep an idea of how the cooling system will be laid out. Also, this is not something I want to test AFTER I have rebuild and reassembled the motor. Until tonight, I could not run my engine for any length of time as my damaged driveshaft carrier seal leaked oil profusely. Today, I found a suitable plug and have been able to continue testing the cooling system. Earlier tests dumped so much oil, that I was worried about running the head dry.
Anyway, the engine starts right up and runs, but damn is it loud! Even with all the intake and exhaust components installed, it's still loud! I guess it'll be silenced some once it's in the hull. Anyway, I had the engine idling for a few minutes, but didn't want to persist too long so as not to irritate the neighbors at 9:30pm. I monitored the head and exhaust components with an IR heat gun. In the cooling setup, I had a T, half the water going to the heat exchanger, and the other half to the exhaust system. At first, the exhaust manifold was getting really hot, and I realized that I had to restrict the flow to the heat exchanger as it didn't have enough resistance to force water into the exhaust system. I put a couple hose pinchers on the heat exchanger inlet and continued my test. I ran it for maybe two minutes total and shut it down. There were a few backfires that I attribute to me adding some crappy old fuel. I realize this was a stupid mistake and tomorrow will dump it into my lawn mower's tank and put some fresh high-test in there. At the end of the test, the engine was hot to the touch, but not overly so. The exhaust system was cooler, but the waterbox, and especially the resonator pipe were REALLY hot. The heat gun registered the WB at like 170 and the resonator at 200 and up. I wish I would have checked this while the ski was running, but can someone tell me if that's normal?
I had the hose on full blast, and the heat exchanger was only a little warm when I touched it. The heat gun registered the head at somewhere around 140-170. Same as the oil cooler.
Anyway, pics and more testing tomorrow.