I have been restoring a 22 ft Mackinac 1972 OMC Stringer Drive Cabin Cruiser for about a year and am now down to fine tuning. I have searched everywhere but can't find a reliable reference as to what the WOT should be. Can anyone help me with this?
The interesting story about this concern is when the previous two owners both said don't expect this boat to go very fast. I found this to be true and while digging into the distributor, I discovered that there were no springs in the spark advance. Replacing those, I am very pleased with the boat's performance. It's hard to believe no one ever discovered this before. Anyway, the engine has very low hours on it for it's age and I had the outdrive rebuild and geared for this engine specification. My concern is that over the years it appears these guys tried to correct the problem by changing prop size.
With the springs in place, the WOT rpm is about 3800 - 4000 rpm with one passenger whereas before the springs it could barely reach 3000. I have found two discussions that for this Ford 302 WOT should be 3800-4200 RPM and in another reference it suggests more like 4800- 5200 RPM.
Does anyone know for sure or have a literature source that gives the right specification?
Thanks.
The interesting story about this concern is when the previous two owners both said don't expect this boat to go very fast. I found this to be true and while digging into the distributor, I discovered that there were no springs in the spark advance. Replacing those, I am very pleased with the boat's performance. It's hard to believe no one ever discovered this before. Anyway, the engine has very low hours on it for it's age and I had the outdrive rebuild and geared for this engine specification. My concern is that over the years it appears these guys tried to correct the problem by changing prop size.
With the springs in place, the WOT rpm is about 3800 - 4000 rpm with one passenger whereas before the springs it could barely reach 3000. I have found two discussions that for this Ford 302 WOT should be 3800-4200 RPM and in another reference it suggests more like 4800- 5200 RPM.
Does anyone know for sure or have a literature source that gives the right specification?
Thanks.
