The boat is toast.
Here is what happened. I took Friday afternoon off and went back down to see if I could find someone to fix the fuel system. I did a lot of research during the week and had a better understanding of the fuel system. The first thing I did was yanked the fuel filter with the hope that it was dirty. The thing was clean as a whistle.
I walked up to the repair place and they gave me the number of a guy that works on outboards since they do not. I called him up and he came on over to check the engine out. I tried to fire it up and even before it turned over he was telling me to cut it. He said it sounded like I had no compression and it was a lot more than just a filter or dirty tank.
He asked me if I could pull the boat out of the water so he could check it out so I spent the next hour getting the thing out of the water with just a paddle and a deck pole. I was able to get a tow for the last part, which was great because otherwise I'd be fighting a pretty stiff wind.
We took the boat over to his shop and he did a compression test on the cylinders. Now, this is a big deal in outboard engines (any engine really) and each cylinder should have a compression around or over 100 psi and all be within 10% of each other. The first cylinders on both blocks had 0 psi. The second ones were around 67 or so and the third pair around 95. So yea, dead engine.
Seems that the shitty fuel blew out the compression in them, thus trashing the engine and putting me in the EXACT SAME PLACE I was before - a screwed engine that either needs to be rebuilt or replaced. Exact same damn place. Seriously. WTF?
So at this point I think I'm just walking away from the speed boat. My current thinking is to sell the two burned engines for parts and then donate the body to charity if they'll take it. I've put way too much money into another trashed engine and with my new interest in sailing I think I'm just going to try to move on for now.
Sucks, big time.
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4 comments:
You've certainly invested a lot of time, travel, and money. Maybe the era of speedboat has passed. If you ever get the craving again, maybe you know someone (cough*C*cough) who has one to steal, I mean borrow, I mean play bow-bunny on.
And I'm sure gas prices are waaay up for boats vs. what they were when you got into things. Sailing is definitely the way to go!
So sorry to hear about the loss of your boat...but like you said, now you can move on to your current love...Sailing! :) And at least Clyde has his boat if you feel the need to get out on a motorboat.
Sorry to hear about the boat. There's always rentals, friends, and options down the road. Sounds like it was becoming a BIG time and money investment anyway. Maybe not worth it now.
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