Performance Boats
Holley carburetors have long been a staple in the go-fast world of high-performance motoring, whether it’s NASCAR, drag racing or on the street. Much like other performance-oriented products—perhaps even more so with a carburetor—a carburetor requires a fundamental setup and a degree of maintenance, and that’s considering you have chosen the correct-size carburetor for your application, at least to get it in the ballpark. Knowing how to adjust, maintain and even repair your Holley carburetor goes a long way toward helping to ensure that your carburetor will make optimum horsepower for a long time. Because of this, we decided to compile a few troubleshooting and repair tips for the popular 4150-series Holley carburetor, which is the series designation for Holley’s street/strip and racing carburetors.
Billy Blair is a man with a lot going on. He owns a pool building company that brings in a serious amount of business in Southern California and that allows him to play around with some other fun things like cable TV shows and, well, performance boats. We’ve seen a few of his boats over the years and they are always extremely well appointed and often understated in many ways.
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Boaters who traveled from as far away as Houston to participate in the first Smokin’ the Sound Poker Run were not disappointed. They enjoyed excellent weather, great hospitality at all of the Poker Run stops and they got up close and personal with the best spectator venue on the Offshore Super Series Powerboat Racing Association circuit.
Because there were several who were experiencing their first Poker Run, the basics were outlined in a morning meeting. Participating boats would each receive a card in a sealed envelope at each of the stops on the Poker Run route with the top three hands winning the prize money.
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The camshaft is often called an engine’s “brain,” and that’s an apt comparison. The cam controls all the major timing events in the valvetrain, which means it is responsible for how efficiently the engine can ingest and combust the air/fuel mixture. Choosing the right cam profile for your engine
combination is the key to making the most possible power.
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Ok, so you have your quarter-million dollar boat with twin 500 EFI Mercruiser engines for a total horsepower of just under 1000, but that just isn’t enough. What do you do? Well… there is one relatively easy way to dramatically increase horsepower, that’s right—a supercharger. On top of the power increase you get that cool unmistakable whine that will cause any wrench head to notice. This particular install is a stage 3 Whipple supercharger which will add approximately 240 hp per engine; in essence, we are adding a third engine.
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When someone buys a boat as a bare hull and finishes it themselves, the odds are that the boat won’t be nearly as sanitary as the original manufacturer rigged it. The original owner of this boat did a decent job but it was no way up to the usual Howard standards. The owner wanted the rigging cleaned up, spiffed up and colored up so he took it to Maveric Marine in Van Nuys, California where Dan Duffin straightened everything out and color-coordinated the powdercoating.
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We chronicled the building of the Challenger 600 EFI engine over the course of two months and now the boat is ready to get out on the water for testing. We headed out to Lake Elsinore in Southern California (one of the few lakes without a speed limit) and gave the boat a whirl. With the help of Paul Pfaff Racing Engine’s Gordon Jennings we had a good day on the water.
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When this Cole 22 Nighthawk sank after a stormy night, a lot of things needed to be replaced. The fuel tank selector valve was toast, and the original equipment was no longer available for purchase. The owner of this boat decided it was a good time to upgrade to an Eddie Marine Total Flow Control high-volume fuel valve. The three-port model (PN SF-100) used here is a safe and efficient fuel valve that is ultra reliable and will flow 240 gallons of fuel per hour. Operated by a 12-volt motor, it meets all U.S. Coast Guard requirements, including the ability to be manually operated should the motor fail for any reason. A six-port model is also available with fuel return provisions for fuel-injected applications (PN SF-200).
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IMCO’s Stern Advantage is the perfect example of a retrofit kit that will bail a boat owner out of a bad situation and allow him to end up with a safer, better performing boat. Maveric Marine invited us to watch its crew install a Stern Advantage on a Nordic 28 that was in the shop for repairs, and we jumped at the chance. This Nordic has a 496 Mag HO with a Bravo One X in it, and the owner understood that the worn out steering problem wasn’t going to go away, so the external hydraulic steering system made a lot of sense.
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Ever see those boats on the TV show Fear Factor? Those are Ultra Custom Boats built by John West and his team in El Cajon, California. Ever watch Monster Garage? That is Jesse James from West Coast Choppers, which is based in Long Beach, California. What happens when these two guys get together to build a boat and a bike is what we have here.
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