bentrabbit
Member
Greetings,
Since my 'winter project' (74 Reinell Tri Hull / OMC 400 / Merc 120) pretty much turned into a full blown 'odyssey', I have resigned myself to the fact that 'she'll be ready when she's ready'. I bought a 69 Fiberform in the meantime, so I'm getting my boating fix whilest playing ghetto-mechanic.
Anyway, once I finally got the 120 running, she started spewing milkshake out of the valve cover breather tube... (Ruh-roh). I shut her down and, sure 'nuff, oil pan had almost as much water as oil....
Took off the manifold and found this:
Well hidden under the manifold and, apparently, not something the previous owner felt he needed to disclose. (If you look under the long weld, you can also see another about 3" long between the plugs that has actually been painted over!)
So... Live/learn/buy the T-shirt.
I kept monitoring Craigslist looking for a replacement 120 block to rebuild and finally found one being sold by a police officer a couple hours away from me... Price was right so off I went and bought it.
Yesterday, I started pulling the incidentals off (fuel pump, oil pan, front motor mount, etc...) and noticed that the crank was fitted with a harmonic balancer... In my thread a few months ago trying to ID the Merc 120, I was informed that 140's came with an H.B. and 120's didn't.
So, my question; Can the harmonic balancer info be taken as absolute? I want to start assembling the needed supplies for the rebuild, but need to know whether I have to shop for 120 or 140. My understanding is that the head (OMC) will be compatible with either. Are there any other tell-tale markings on the block or pistons I can look for to tell me whether this is actually 153ci or 181ci?
Since my 'winter project' (74 Reinell Tri Hull / OMC 400 / Merc 120) pretty much turned into a full blown 'odyssey', I have resigned myself to the fact that 'she'll be ready when she's ready'. I bought a 69 Fiberform in the meantime, so I'm getting my boating fix whilest playing ghetto-mechanic.
Anyway, once I finally got the 120 running, she started spewing milkshake out of the valve cover breather tube... (Ruh-roh). I shut her down and, sure 'nuff, oil pan had almost as much water as oil....
Took off the manifold and found this:
Well hidden under the manifold and, apparently, not something the previous owner felt he needed to disclose. (If you look under the long weld, you can also see another about 3" long between the plugs that has actually been painted over!)
So... Live/learn/buy the T-shirt.
I kept monitoring Craigslist looking for a replacement 120 block to rebuild and finally found one being sold by a police officer a couple hours away from me... Price was right so off I went and bought it.
Yesterday, I started pulling the incidentals off (fuel pump, oil pan, front motor mount, etc...) and noticed that the crank was fitted with a harmonic balancer... In my thread a few months ago trying to ID the Merc 120, I was informed that 140's came with an H.B. and 120's didn't.
So, my question; Can the harmonic balancer info be taken as absolute? I want to start assembling the needed supplies for the rebuild, but need to know whether I have to shop for 120 or 140. My understanding is that the head (OMC) will be compatible with either. Are there any other tell-tale markings on the block or pistons I can look for to tell me whether this is actually 153ci or 181ci?
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