[spareparts]

the truth to that feat was reveiled in a magazine article a while back( Powerboat, I think), apparently they did swap out lower units( with water pumps) on a regular basis, they were also allowed to change plugs and decarbon the engine. Due to the fact there were no spray decarbonizers available at the time, the were allowed to pull the head and scrape the chambers, because this took some time to do, they would install another stand by power head to continue while the other one was being serviced so the event could go on. There was some speculation that the decarboned powerhead that was returned wasn't even the same one that was removed. Fred Kekifer was a marketing genuis. During the test, one of the test drivers fell asleep and was killed when he ran into the trees, they decided to continue with the marathon, changing drivers more regularlly. I wish I could remember exactly which magazine it was in, the article was great, explaining some of the wars and compitition between Mercury and OMC, with the industry greats trying to one up each other.