56 5hp Gale Buccaneer timing ?

[AMaylish]

So I have a 56 Gale 5hp 5D12B. A friend bought it as a cornerpeice for me. Upon further inspection someone had completely rebuilt this motor but couldn't fix the frozen fuel petcock. Before I started it I noticed the piston inspection plate was white with burnt paint. Once I fixed the fuel issue and fired it the engine it roughly idled and the inspection plate gets wicked hot way hotter than any other part of the motor. And yes water is flowing through it. Takes about 1 minute of rough idle for the plate to burn skin like really burn. My question is could be timing is off 180 and it's detonating in the inspection chamber ?... Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[racerone]

If timing was out 180 the motor would NOT RUN.------So your thinking is way , way off there.-----Is that plate water cooled , yes or no ?

 

[AMaylish]

Yes

 

[racerone]

Is there one plate or 2 plates??----Is just one part ( front 1/2" ) water cooled or the entire plate ?-----And yes that plate will get very hot on those models !!

 

[F_R]

Wrong!! The plate is only cooled along one edge. The rest of it has fire inside. The paint burned off during the first 5 minutes of running brand new and right out of the box. I know, I un-boxed a lot of them. FYI, the 5.5hp Johnsons and Evinrudes were the same way.

 

[AMaylish]

Good info coming in here... Yes only the front rib of the plate is cooler... Maybe I need to just revisit the carburetor in this situation.

 

[AMaylish]

Water cooled I should say

 

[F_R]

So what is the main problem, rough running? Unless they have already been replaced, it has bad (cracked) coils. ALL 1956 OMC motors do.

 

[AMaylish]

It has new coils I thought maybe the coils were firing at the bottom of the piston stroke

 

[racerone]

Your assumptions are totally wrong.-----There is no way that engine would have spark at the bottom of the stroke and RUN for you.----You need to do some orderly troubling shooting.-----If this motor was actually " rebuilt " it would run so nice that you would not want to shut it off !!

 

[AMaylish]

I will start at the top and work my way down and rebuilt this motor myself and get it running smooth... I thought there could be something simple that was a known mistake. I'll be back with updates on it as well as stories on the 56 Chris craft 13