Carver Owners Forum

Hello everyone and thank you for the opportunity to be a part of the CYO community. I recently bought a new to me Carver Santigo, 380 and to be quite honest I wish I wasn’t so impulsive. I absolutely love the layout of this boat as it is the boat I was searching for unfortunately, this was the only boat in the area, and even though I knew it had a host of issues, I was willing to deal with them. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about big blocks and it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve owned a boat. I was really trying to find one with diesels or crusaders. Unfortunately, the one I have found had MerCruiser 7.4 L MPI magnums now I really wanted to avoid these motors and I honestly thought they were 330 hp motors which from what I was told were a better motor so I was OK with it now I bought this boat from a dealership in Long Island, which was advertised with 330 hp MerCruiser 7.4 L MPI motors I really wish I could make this short but there’s a whole host of things which I am going to probably make other topics on and ask a bunch of questions so I do apologize in advance. I haven’t had the boat three weeks , they insisted on not fixing the items I had asked for until it was paid in full, then waited to the very last minute to fix the things that I needed to up until the night before I was scheduled to take the boat home to Connecticut I got as far as , the river in which the marina that I belong to is at when I lost the starboard engine. Right now I have the boat getting pulled out of the water and the motor pulled so I can go through it but I really think this boat was going to be a money pit for a while , I’m not sure if I have any recourse as they advertised this boat with the incorrect engines. The surveyor didn’t catch it and listed different engines in the survey and here I am with a Boat with motors I really didn’t want and was advised not to buy this boat if it had these motors .

So I guess I’m wondering what I should do as far as these engines go. It seems that it’s going to be pretty difficult to find remanufactured engines from a reliable source at least that’s what Mike Mechanic says. I know I can’t buy them new, so I’m wondering if I should go to a secondary source to get remanufactured 7.4 L MPI magnums or go carbureted or swap everything out and convert it to a diesel. I really like the idea of converting it to a diesel but I’m not exactly sure what the differences are between a Carver that was a diesel as opposed to when that is a gas. In other words will I need to change the struts? Do I need to change shaft sizes? Do I need to change the transmissions etc. I’m hoping there’s someone in this forum that owns a late 90s early 2000s Carver 380 that came with diesels from the factory as I would like to pick their brain and see exactly what I would need to do to convert it and if it’s even worth it. Again, I do apologize for, the long winded post , Jeff

Going to diesels would likely be a VERY expensive and time-consuming option. If you were dedicated to keeping the boat a long time and planned to do a lot of long-distance cruising, it might make sense. Otherwise, I'd stick with the current engines. It would likely involve new transmissions, shafts, struts, and props.

What actually happened to the engine? You can typically replace the short or long block to get an existing engine back in operation. I would not go back to carbs on a boat that was already set up for fuel injection.

You state you "thought it had 330HP" and it was "advertised with 330HP", but what is actually in it. Sounds like Merc big blocks which typically would be around 330HP.

Good morning and thanks for getting back to me.They are gen five MerCruiser MPI magnum motors 380 hp. 7.4 L with 502 heads . The reason I was thinking diesel is because after what I paid for the boat and what I’m going to have to put into it I don’t want to have to do this again five years from now, so my thought was to switch to diesel because they should have more longevity I was hoping someone had a Carver 380 with diesels in the group that can provide me with some information as to what the running gear is like transmission gear ratio’s, etc.

I have an 1987 3227 Convertible that the previous owner converted from the the Crusader 260's to a pair of Perkins T6.354's Good motors and they run great but the max RPM of a diesel is about half that of a gas engine and as such you also have to change the props and the gear ratios of the V drives. The previous owner did not do this in my case and now I'm trying to figure out what should be there. Hopefully I'll get a response from Michigan Wheel at some point. The upside with this conversion was that the diesels are fairly bulletproof and easy to work on. The down side is since the running gear wasn't changed too it operates like a trawler now with a top speed of maybe 10 knots.

Thanks for the reply, very interesting. I wonder if you’ll need to change struts and shafts? I’m thinking there’s got to be somebody on here with a diesel. I’m gonna see if I can start another thread and see what i come up with.

The crusaders and mercs both use GM blocks and heads, so no difference there. The merc magnums have a "taller" cam, larger valves and bigger injectors, otherwise they are same as the base 330 engine. So I am not sure why you would not want them?
Did the engine throw a rod or just stop running? Was wondering what made you pull the engine?