Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of “we did this exact same thing already”… except this time we’re doing it again because the 302 we dropped in the Bullnose turned out to be absolute garbage. Zero PSI on a hole will really ruin your day, so Angus and I went back to the original plan: find a dirt-cheap “boat motor” and shove it in a truck. We dragged home a rotten MerCruiser boat, basically removed the boat from around the engine, and yanked out a 302 that’s got more hours on it than I’ve ever seen on a marine engine. Before we wasted another week of our lives, I actually did the responsible thing and compression tested it. Numbers weren’t perfect dry, but they were a whole lot better than zero, and the oil wasn’t a milkshake. We stripped the marine stuff, flushed the block, did frost plugs, cleaned it up, and converted it to a 4-barrel the way God intended. Then we handled the important Small Block Ford nerd stuff: 28oz balance, the right flywheel/clutch setup, and that starter spacer plate so it doesn’t sound like a Chevy out of shim. Finally, we dropped the MerCruiser 188 302 in the truck, bolted on some USA-made Hedman long tubes with the ball-and-socket collectors, and lit it off. It was so loud it about reset my hearing, but hey—great oil pressure, basically no blowby, and for $400 worth of rotten boat, we’ve got a real shot at dirt-cheap performance.