I spent the last couple evenings checking out and servicing the Scimitar. I drained, flushed and changed the lube in the drive, Sheeez ... at $12.50 a quart for the high perf lube now, changed the fuel filter, oil and filter, and inspeced the hull for cracks where I done the transom mod, and believe it or not it all looked good.
The timing and compression check was a challenge, I removed the back seat, bought a strip of degree tape from Parr Automotive, pulled the plugs, determined the TDC of #1 cylinder and moved the TDC marks to another position where I could get an exact reading of the total advance of the timimg. Glenn set the timing on this motor to begin with, and it was a total guess because the timing cover on these late model motors don't have the degree tabs like the older ones, I got to say he got it really close too, it was set on 8 degrees just like you would think it should be. The total advance limits between 28 to 34 degree's, but the deal was, there were no marks to read when the motor was tached up. The total advance was running on 28 degree's tached up @ 1500 rpm, I moved the timing up to a 34 degree total advance and at idle it came up to 12 degree's. The compression readings are consistant 167 / 170 and I might add it takes about two hours to remove and replace the plugs on this sucker. The plugs were the perfect tan/brown color, that tickled me too.
When I got it all put back together I took it out to the lake and was expecting it to run a little faster than it had been but that wasn't the case, the water was pretty calm and the best speed I could get out of it was 66.2 and it took about a half a mile to get that. It seems that the rougher the water is the faster this baby runs, as long as the prop stays in the water, the best speed so far has been 68.6 out at Draper lake when the water was really rough, keeping more hull in the water slows it down quite a bit.
Kinda Funny ... I was on the west side of the lake after a speed run, idled down, turned the radio on, opened up a cool one (diet coke) and was just poking back towards the dock @ 6 / 8 mph when a fellow in another boat came over and asked me if I was having trouble, he said he'd never seen me go slow before and thought I may need help.
