My father-in-law had a 1957 Chris Craft wooden boat with a 318 Chrysler inboard. The block had split because the previous owner never drained the water out of it and it froze sitting outdoors in the winter. He found a 318 out of a 57 pick up truck and installed it. We never picked up on the backwards rotation of the original boat engine. We started the "new" truck engine and the transmission now ran backwards, the water pump blew out instead of sucking in and the prop was all wrong.
Most 302's installed in marine applications are no different than a standard passenger car engine. I've had a couple of them over the years...tried & tried to find any differences in them and never did. That said, it is common to have a reverse-rotation engine, BUT usually only if the engine is installed in a boat with dual engines/dual outdrives. You don't want both props spinning the same direction....you wouldn't be able to steer it. So one spins clockwise (normal) and the other spins ccw. This is accomplished (normally) by use of a special camshaft. Everything else but the water pump & starter are the same. Some of the GM engines used gear driven camshafts (gear to gear...no idlers) which reversed the cam's rotation direction....and since the engine spins ccw, the cam spins cw (normal direction) and everything worked out. That said, I would advise against putting a big block on the same outdrive. Those outdrive units are rated for a certain amount of HP and torque, and I can guarantee you that even a stock 460 (or 390 or whatever) will break the current outdrive, which is probably rated at something like 300 HP. You might be able to find an outdrive unit rated for more power...but then you get into issues of fitment (mounts)...and every I/O boat I've ever worked with (for that matter...any boat, whether it be an I/O, inboard, or outboard) is a pain in the butt to work on due to close quarters. Much worse than most cars. To add to that, most of your cast iron engines will have nasty water jackets, holy heat exchangers, rusted and holy manifolds...all because they don't get serviced like they should. Every boat engine I've seen is like that...for that matter...even when they ARE serviced regularly. Last 302 I got that came from a boat was a 210 HP Mercruiser from the late 70's...the exhaust ports were rusted through in the manifolds due to water sitting in the water jacket. The block wasn't much better. There was so much rust pitting around the cylinders that I was afraid to even bore it .030" for fear of breaking through. It ended up being a pile of scrap metal. I would have figured it to have at least a steel crank, but no...it was the exact same crankshaft, block, intake manifold, pistons, rods, cam, harmonic damper, and heads as another JY engine I picked up out of a '79 F150.
I'm pretty lucky on this boat. I can get in the compartment for the engine, tons of room. In the pic, the brown area at the end is the lid for the engine compartment. Me and another guy were down in it at same time working on bilge pump. Tons of room. The engine in it is not a marine engine. Word is that it was taken from a car, rebuilt and put in boat.
seeing as how were on the subject of a boat and car here I have a weird question. can I put Mercruiser boat heads on a 302?? I've heard of ford people doing this before with 302's and 351's but what do you gain from it? more compression? power? or just bigger exhaust ports?
