Just bought a 1971 winner cougar with OMC sterndrive need help with rebuild buick 225 v6

hey guys,

I just purchased a 1971 cougar with an omc sterndrive, I believe the engine is a 225 buick v6. The guy I bought it from said it started up when he ran gas through the carb. When I got the boat home I hooked it up to the water hose and started supplying water to it. I found water coming out of the side of the engine block. It looked like a drain so I screwed the bolt down and stopped the engine from spewing water. I tried to start it and it turned over and turned over and seemed like just one cylinder hit lik once out of about twenty tries. I took the carb off and found a lot of rust insinde the intake manifold and carb. I'm going to clean the carb out, do you guys recommend doing a rebuild? I have done a lot of outboards but this will be my first inboard. I'm a little nervous, I would like to find a shop manual for it but am having trouble finding one. I took the valve covers off and it seems like there is a lot of oil in there with a little bit of rust but for the most part looks ok. I guess it kind of depends on how the pistons look when I get to them. I pulled the dip stick out and the oil seems to resemble black pancake syrup. If anyone could help me I would GREATLY appreciate it!

Thanks,

Jason

I would start by having a very good look at the outdrive.------The electric shift units are not very popular.---------------The lower part of the drive is very well built.-The upper gear box and the ball gears can be a money gobbler.---------------It would be a shame if you spend time and money on the engine only to find that the drive is bad.-It can cost huge money to repair that depending on where you are.

racerone said:

I would start by having a very good look at the outdrive.------The electric shift units are not very popular.---------------The lower part of the drive is very well built.-The upper gear box and the ball gears can be a money gobbler.---------------It would be a shame if you spend time and money on the engine only to find that the drive is bad.-It can cost huge money to repair that depending on where you are.

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The man I bought it from told me he ran gas through the carb and it shifted into forward and reverse but I don't know... i'm getting nervous. I just ran gas through the carb and it seemed like one cylinder wanted to hit right but the rest didnt. Does anyone know the sequence from the distributor that the plugs should be hooked up? The plugs are getting great spark... but i dont think they are in the correct sequence. I want to get it running and sell it and possibly transfer a 302 fuel injected engine in and be easy on the sterndrive.

I have the a 70 omc 225 and I can look at the order and get it to u tomorrow. Let me know if u need parts mine has a cracked block and I'm trying to get rid of it.9

jadilla said:

do you guys recommend doing a rebuild?

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an honest mechanic doesn't fix a "no start" by rebuilding the engine, so no...not a recommendation yet... the worst thing you can do is start tearing parts off. .

You need to evaluate what you have. Get that mucky oil out best you can, change filter and put in new oil, pull spark plugs and turn the engine over to see if water shoots out of the cylinders. Compression test the engine.

Factory OMC Shop manuals are available new from Ken Cook publications http://www.outboardbooks.com/

turn over as in try to start? why should water shoot out?

jadilla said:

turn over as in try to start? why should water shoot out?

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yes, and water should NOT shoot out.

if it does, it indicates failed exhaust manifolds, risers, riser gaskets, cylinder heads, head gaskets, intake, or block and you'll know you have something that probably isn't rebuildable if water has sat in the cylinders.. the rust damage will generally be too severe

water also would explain why it won't start (hydrolocking and wetting spark plugs)

the previous owner may have had it running without water supplied to the cooling system and that may explain why he had it running and you can't get it to fire, which is a good thing if the oil looks like tar.... you don't want it running with that in there

I just found a 225 v6 out of an old jeep that runs great... I think I'm going to do an engine swap and not even mess with that old motor

Just make sure you swap all the marine components to the jeep engine.----------Or have a parachute handy.

I will.... most of the parts should be interchangeable for spark suppression

You don't know me and i don't know you. And i don't stand to make a penny on you.
The only question here is will you accept advice ?
Get rid of that boat before you spend another dime on it.
Ask us for advice before you buy another boat. So.....do not buy anything that says omc on it.

For real? Why not keep it and fix it up? My tilt and trim works and I will be getting a great working engine for cheap. This is my first inboard... I wont get another one if the stringer isn't worth it. However... I really really like the boat it's on.

Some " Winner boats " were built without any wood in the frame work under the floor.-----They were like that in the mid 70's and not sure if a 71 was built like that.-----------------So if you got it cheap , can do the work yourself you may be OK.----Check out the drive carefully.

Your going to have to get new mani's, risers and the carb rebuilt. You will have to probably replace the starter with a marine one, the alt., dist also needs to be marine.
The gas tank has to be cleaned, the fuel system gone thru, the fuel pump has to be marine. The carb also.
The drive has to be pressure tested.You need gear lube for the lower that is different than the gear lube for the upper and the intermediate.
You will need a new water pump installed, it is located in the upper.
They sell on this website the manual you need the seloc #3400 in the upper right hand corner.
I believe it is 1964-1985 sterndrive omc tittle.
Or you can look for the original factory manual on flea-bay.

hey jadilla , i bought an old pile of crap boat with an omc electric shift drive and a buick 300...after speaking to a great boat mechanic who advised me to change the buick to a chevy i took his advice. i had a hundred people tell me that my omc drive was crap and my boat not worth the time , money , or effort . after all said and done i spent a total of $3,400 .00 ( that includes what i paid for the boat ) and have had many great times with my family on our old hoopty boat. my point being...if you really like the boat , you can pick up a buick 225 v6 for a reasonable price if you look and all the other parts too , just plan on spending some time and go through everything with a fine toothed comb and your boat will do fine. if you want turn key boating , buy a brand new one....have fun....dimitri

Master mechanic said:

You don't know me and i don't know you. And i don't stand to make a penny on you.
The only question here is will you accept advice ?
Get rid of that boat before you spend another dime on it.
Ask us for advice before you buy another boat. So.....do not buy anything that says omc on it.

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This is very good advice contrary to what you actually want and hope to hear.

jadilla said:

For real? Why not keep it and fix it up?

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Because it's an OMC Stringer Drive boat.
You are new to boating and boats. Once you've been around them for a while, you'll know what we are talking about.

Two possible scenarios:

• Take heed of this advice, and the years down the road will show you this, and you may be thankful for today's advice.
• Foo Foo this advice, and you'll learn this the hard and expensive way.

If you do forge forward, some of these little Buicks were "odd firing", meaning that the crank angle between several cylinders is not equal. Of which means that the points cam in the distributor is also un-equal...... which means that the distributor must be indexed correctly and the rotor/distributor cap must be in the correct orientation with one another.

Again.... I don't recall which Buick it is.... but something to learn and use to avoid trouble.
Hopefully a few of the guys will chime in on this.


More info that you may not want to hear.

We'll see three stern drives in the U.S... there are more, but we'll typically see the three major sellers.
Mercruiser, Volvo Penta and the older but no longer produced OMC.
When you look at the used boat market, sellers will almost always list Merc and Volvo.
If you see a boat listed that does not list the drive, I can just about bet you that it's an OMC.
Why is that????

A friend of mine owns/operates a Marine Salvage yard.
He buys old tired boats of all three engines/drives types and sells parts.
His Bread-N-Butter sales are OMC parts.
Why is that???


Edit:
This type of response to your questions may be upsetting to you today... and it certainly isn't what you wanted to hear......, but if you avoid these potential headaches now, and later learn that this was good advice........., you'll be thanking us!

.

A bit of OMC history.

I'm not sure when the Stringer Drive was introduced, but I do know that it was discontinued in/around 1987 when OMC brought out the Cobra Gimbal system "Stern Drive".
The Cobra used Dog Clutch gear engagement.

Later came the King Cobra dog clutch drive, and later the King Cobra "Cone Clutch" drive using Volvo Penta's cone clutch design.

By 1993 OMC was in the process of Chapter 11 or 13 because of the failing sales rate that was greatly influenced by the problematic Stringer Drives.
Apparently the company could not recover from this.

Volvo Penta was also in the process of purchasing the failing company at this time.

By 1994 all of these previous OMC drives were now Volvo Penta cone clutch drives using a portion of the OMC Gimbal system and hydraulic trim system.
Later a company called Bombardier gained the rights to continue producing OMC parts.
There is a company called Romeo's Marine (Bombardier dealer), and I believe this is where you'll find Ken Cook.