Engine of the Week is presented by
Plenty of engine builders around the country have experience shipping engines internationally. However, Daryl Hameetman has to do it on a higher level. Hameetman, owner of Hameetman Racing Engines (HRE) in Cape Coral, FL, has a customer located in South Africa with two 50-foot Nortech Cat boats that Hameetman has serviced for years.
Typically, most engine builders simply ship the engine itself back and forth when rebuilds need to be done. However, these two 50-foot boats each house four engines and need to be shipped in their entirety so HRE can do the install, paintwork and upholstery. This time around, due to saltwater damage and years of use, all eight engines needed to be replaced.
We’ll give you all the water-soaked details in this episode of Engine of the Week.
With eight new identical 588 cubic inch big block Chevy marine engines needing to be built, HRE uses a ‘two-at-a-time’ technique.
HRE started the project with Dart Big M blocks, which the shop ran a 4.580˝ bore in. HRE also went to a bigger diameter lifter in these motors, which they did in-house as well.
From there, HRE used Dart’s CNC 355 heads, new cranks and rods, JE pistons, Bullet cams, T&D rockers, a Crower valvetrain, and Blower Shop intercooled setups with 14-71 blowers. The engines also use Moroso 10-inch billet oil pumps and custom 10-inch pans.
Other machine work HRE did was the pin oiling in all of the engines. The rest of it was really pretty basic, according to Hameetman.
Before all eight engines are carefully installed, HRE runs each one on their SuperFlow dyno to make sure they’re running in top condition.
All said and done, HRE has about 400 hours into building these engines. As 588 cubic inch, supercharged, big block Chevy-based marine engines, these powerplants pump out 1,025 horsepower and 1,000 lb.-ft. of torque each, with a compression ratio of 9:1.
The boats are 50-feet long with 11.5-foot beams, but with 4,100 horsepower behind each one, the boats will cruise at about 135-140 mph with a top speed around 170 mph.
While these boats can fly out on open water, Hameetman’s customer doesn’t do any offshore racing. Instead, he just enjoys being an extreme boat owner and uses them for offshore pleasure.
We’ll see you next week!
