1978 Chieftain 25

[78 Chieftain]

Hi everyone. I am new to the forum as a subscriber but have been reading about everyone's progress on our Starcrafts. I own a '78 Chieftain 25. I stripped the bottom and sides, primed it and two coats of Pettit Epoxy. I also replaced the floor, carpet and bolsters, most of the electrical stuff and steering cable. I took the boat out and it immediately overheated. We replaced the water pumps twice and removed the thermostat but it overheated again and cracked the exhaust manifold. That was two years ago and I am stuck as to what to do next; spend more than it is worth or sell it as is. Help!

 

[GA_Boater]

Welcome aboard, 78.

Moved this to a new thread instead of leaving it in an inactive thread.

What powers your Chief? You would be better off posting engine questions in the right engine section. Too bad you didn't find us two years ago, might have saved you some grief.

 

[pckeen]

Put some pictures on here so we know what you have.

Whether you get it fixed or not really depends on whether you want to use this boat. If you do the work yourself and get it running, you may have a better boat than you could otherwise buy. On the other hand, an old non-running Chief, without a motor and with a trailer is worth under $1000 - maybe more if the hull and interior is fully restored, and you can find the right person who is looking for a restored boat (but, alas, they are few and far between). A decent shape older Chief, with a running motor seems to be worth between $2k and $5k, depending on your region.

 

[Watermann]

:welcome: to iboats,

Sounds like you've done a ton of work on your Chief, sure would like to see a few pics. Some around here might say it's the price of admission :lol:

We'll need to know the motor info with serial #. Sometimes people change out motors over the years so it's not always a given it's the original.

 

[smevil]

The first thing I thought of, with the information provided so far is that regardless if its a closed cooling system or open, when we changed my water pump before running we noted two blades from the pump were missing so we looked up where the pump goes up with light an seen them up by the elbow, so we had to dig out the old impellers from tube exiting the water pump going to motor with long scribes, basically they were blocking most of waterflow to motor. Just a thought, and yes we would always like to see a picture or two, Please