Bozeman Bob

IMHO its not a hard freeze and you will be good overnight. Also if its a I/O, the outdrive will conduct the "heat" from the water to your block as well as the bottom of your boat doing the same to your engine compartment while sitting in 45* water. I would not worry about it.

As long as it was in the Mississippi river. You set the commercials boys loose on any of the Great Lakes and they will just about wipe out everything with gill netting. I think the Canadians [ that are grandfathered in, no new licenses are issued I believe ] are still allowed to do it for Walleye on Lake Erie. Sure wouldn't want them on O taking a ton of incidental Kings etc. It will be a mess once the Carp hit the Lakes ,unfortunately.,

I read years ago that they already had electric barriers in Chicago. And that still isn't 100% full proof as far as preventing them from entering the lakes. As someone else noted on here ,what's to prevent birds etc. from picking up they frys .eggs and depositing them in Lake Michigan . Its going to be a losing battle unless Erie freezing over stops them ,not sure if they have done any studies on how they survive in cold waters. Trump could fund and pass every EPA regulation for them and it still wont stop the inevitable IMHO.

6 year old post, good luck with that !

One other thing I would try, make 2 jumper wires and hook them up to the positive and negative sides on the battery. Then put the other sides on the coil. That will take verify the coil and distributor components are working along with firing up the engine, or not. This way your 100% sure its from the coil back .

In your first post you stated you were getting power to the tach. If so you are limited to what can be wrong, take the tach wire off the coil and see what happens.

No on the tach, see if your getting spark from the coil before you go any further. If you didn't get the inline spark checker put the wire that goes to the distributor about 3/4 of a inch from a grounding point and see if it sparks. Just don't put it close to the carb unless you have a fire ext.close by. If your getting spark put the muffs on and see if it fires. As Ray mentioned it could be a intermittent problem, as was the case with mine until it just finally stopped working.

You say you have power to the coil,,,buy a inline spark tester for 7-10 $ at Harbor Freight or your local auto store. Put it between your coil and distributor, you should see it flashing if your /petronix/factory electronic system is working. If not you have at least isolated the problem to a bad coil or ignition box . If its the coil, they usually recommend the replacement one have a certain ohms/voltage factor. A car one will work for a while then probably self grenade as mine did. Replaced my coil last year that has the petronix system after it stopped out in the middle of the lake. The PO had a spare one in his parts box and both units were the car version, did some research and got the correct ones, swapped out the other engine's coil at the same time.

What about the points ? Sounds like there closed up. Also could be the shift interrupter switch not working, but if you were trolling along and it just died I would check points. I would also consider putting a Petronix Ignition system in the distributor to do away with the points all together. Can't tell by your post if you have points or not, you should be getting a good spark from the coil wire going to the distributor ,check that out without getting zapped. Then start looking into fuel delivery

If no one can help you here I would post your question in the Marine Electronics Forum at www.thehulltruth.com there very helpful with those types of issues, good luck ! Also Raymarine.com has a forum for there product, just takes a few days after you register and post to get a reply. The question is pre screened by them and answered by them.

A dinghy to carry everything that has been suggested.....

Not a bad idea for catch and release to have a Bogo grip handy. Put a line on it and when you catch a Salmon its best to lip her and let it drag behind the boat until it becomes feisty, then release it. Lakers don't really go belly up, along with eating up the bait salmon munch on, so if they do its no big deal, something in the food chain will take care of it.

What do you have for a engine ? Some of the 120's and 170's [ basically all the 4 cylinders] don't like to run smoothly at trolling speed. A trolling plate/ buckets/bags or electronic ignition may be needed ,just a heads up ! Trying to adjust your idle on muffs in the driveway isn't the same as it sitting in the water with back pressure on the exhaust. You usually lose 1-200 rpms from where it was set on muffs after you dunk it.

I could be wrong but once a boat is registered the numbers stay with it forever. So if you bought a Fla boat the FL numbers will always be the first 2 letters and they don't change with change of ownership. If it was documented that easy to trace through the USCG. Now if the guy lived in a state with fresh water and a ocean bordering it ,like NY, that will require a lot more looking into. Outboards or inboards/closed cooling system/ fighting chair plate/ outriggers/ any links to it ? What make boat is it ? some lower quality ones used cheap hardware to begin with. Any residue of salt on the blocks or anywhere else where it could stand and not be washed away?

I would guess there is a miniscule amount of boats that go through boatfax. Is there something your looking at the raises a eyebrow ?

Not sure how a post on a open forum wanting to know what is actually going on is hurting anything. They apparently have enough Teams and sponsors that they don't need anymore, judging from what I have read on FB. Good to see that you can presume I did not sign up or was in the process until I saw what the banter on FB awhile ago. Waiting to hear both sides of the riff to see if I am ill informed.

Shark v KOTL Seeing a few post on FB about this and IMHO it is the teams that enter that get screwed by not allowing them, Shark, to help sponsor a event . More sponsors translates to more swag for all teams that PAY to get in on the action. Who is the sponsor that is raising a stink about this ,Cannon ?. Competition is good for all, hell that's one of the reasons people enter these contest, to make you a better fisherman. The MFGs should treat it the same way if there are two companies selling the same type of tackle. Shame on any tournament turning down anyone willing to donate prizes/product to be used for giveaways for a tournament. More payback = more entries. Won't enter KOTL because of this.

Unhook the steering cable from the outdrive to confirm its the cable and not the outdrive seizing up.

I think one of the best views is on Three Sisters Islands which are on the west side of Goat Island. Amazing view of the upper rapids ,cant see the Falls from that point as your just above them. I think you would be scared #$6%66 less before you even got to the Power Plant, never the less the actual Falls,6 miles upstream from that. I would love to see that ranger go through some class 5 rapids or whatever the highest ranking is, can you say a 10 ' wall of water slowed us down ? Google kayakers Niagara Falls rapids to get a good idea what a couple hundred thousand cubic feet of water looks like when it is compressed into a portion of the river that is a couple hundred feet wide.

^^^^ Right on !!!! His system is open if it clogged up with Hudson sludge. So as you said, no pressure ,just water running through it. If it was closed the radiator caps are usually 7 lbs. Which isn't a lot. Worth a try in my book, cant hurt anything if you keep your eye on the temp. gauge for awhile after the job was done.. Dremel out the crack a bit and I bet it holds as long as yours did. It would buy him some time to build up the funds needed for a block [ if in the future he wanted to go that route ] and be able to keep the smaller boat at the same time. A no brainer in my book, just google it and I bet you get a bunch of did its and no problems. I did that on a chevy transfer case to save 1800.00 and its still holding up from a year ago.. Best reply yet ! wish I would of remembered that fix first,haha.

SO true and I am teaching my son to grab a wrench and fix things like this by himself. A manual/google/ forums like this and a little patience has that motor in and out for next to nothing. Its not rocket science when all your doing is unbolting parts off one block and slapping them on the other one that's sitting right next to it. The best thing is self feeling gratified when you hit that key for the first time. I suppose if you have deep pockets then paying the man is a lot easier. I am with PAP on this one fore sure.

BTW something doesn't sound right. If you pulled the correct plugs water should of drained out of the block, unless there was some crap that stopped the water from draining. The manifold plugs would not have any bearing on the block cracking. The plugs on the block are just above the oil pan mid section and water should of drained out when you pulled them. Did you take the boat for a test ride before purchasing it ?

Probably could upgrade it to a 5.7 ,[after doing a little googling] ,to make sure the heads ,exhaust/intake manifolds and fuel system are the same . If they are all you would probably have to do is change your prop to a higher pitch. 5.7 is a stronger plant with a great rep.

A 5.0 Volvo is a GM block with some Volvo specific add on's. I would think you could get a remanufactured 5.0 GM short block and put all the Volvo parts from your old engine on that block. Your not going to need heads/manifolds etc. I bet you you could pick one up for around 1500, from a machine shop. Don't think you even need bronze freeze plugs seeing that your using it in freshwater. That's what I would do, at least you would have a engine with new pistons , rings and crank which should translate to 3,000 hours of use. Heads are easy to get rebuilt and you don't have to pull the engine for that.