These guys have much more experience than me. I just wanted to know did you use a drill motor on the driveshaft to see if you were pumping water? Also gettig the block halves vatted there is a chance a chunk of something has lodged blocking waterflow. I had a hard time with a Mercury 5 hp motor getting good water flow. Had it appart & shoved everything that would fit in every water port & around the cylinder water jacket before it would run at normal temps. It wasn’t vatted either, just sitting for who knows long & given up by others. Only other solution I could suggest is getting tubing that fits the water ports & trying to force water thru the passages & see if it flows out & where. Good luck, sounds like you put time into it. I cheated & had a light sourse from surgery & a fiber optic cable very small & I could light up the bottom og the water jackets where the water ports were. I used plastic optical cable from a robotic assembly line. I needed light way down inside a leg on another project & had some time on my hands. Good luck!!
