figure i'll be needing a lot of the resources available here as I literally hardly know anything about boats. Always love the river just could never justify buying one when i was living at home, limited space, and no tow vehicle especially since in the midwest here it's only about 3-4 months of good boat weather + I'm also big into cars & motorcycles so the boat was secondary to that.
This summer my buddy who is a big boat person directed me to this one as I was expressing interest even though I didn't have a place to store it at the time or anything to pull it. However I still was pretty sure I was going to buy it for like $3200-3500. Then I broke my foot on my motorcycle and forgot about it. My buddy knew the guy and he had only mentioned selling it to people never actually advertised. Then now last friday my buddy said the guy finally put a sign on it with $2500 on it. just so happens the last weekend I traded a focus I bought for $1000 to a guy for his 96 chevy k1500 that is in great mechanical shape and I also bought and closed on my first house last month and I have a pretty decent amount of room with a 3 car sized garage and decent driveway space on a dead end street.
So the stars sort of aligned lol.
Anyway, ended up giving $2,000 for the boat. Took a risk as negotiating him to $2,000 was a stretch and I think he only caved since I was there and able to pull it out of the yard where it was sunk into the ground a few inches, that exact moment. The guy swore it was mechanically solid even though he hadn't had it out in water since august 2015.
Took it home put it on the battery charger Sunday morning. Put $20 of gas in it and buddy and I took it down and dropped it into the rough chilly water. Fired right up and we cruised it up and down the river for a good hour beating the tar out of it and checking it all over. Motor runs great, cruises at a good 50-55mph max. Found trailer trim button doesn't work, we had to jump it and for the most part the gauges are all crazy or not working. Otherwise everything else works. Motor runs great. River was really rough but boat handled it pretty well. No leaks or anything.
Main thing it needs is interior work. Mostly cleaning but need a new rear bench seat. Engine cover has a good rip in it too.
Guy said a couple years back covered sitting under a tree through winter, a branch fell through the cover unknown to him so it sat for months until he uncovered it to see the hole and the big branch had fallen right into the rear seat beating it up pretty good.
Otherwise trailer is in good shape with new tires.
Motor is the 5.7 mercruiser.
Big issue is I'm worrying about sourcing any sylvan specific parts for this thing since from what I know Sylvan doesn't support this boat anymore really and these bowrider (is that right for the type of boat?) made by sylvan are pretty rare as is.
Still know nothing hardly about boats but I'm sure I'm about to learn. Will be a good TLC project over winter to get ready to take out next year. Going to try to winterize it first and then do some deep cleaning on the interior. In spring I'll do a basic tuneup on the motor and work with my buddy to sort the electrical issues. I have a build going on my Trans am that will take up a lot of my time/space over the winter so going to keep it simple on the boat for now.
Overall in the past couple weeks I have about $3100 between buying the boat and truck combined so I'm pretty happy with things as they sit!
Here are a couple pictures.
if it wasnt for my trans am and bikes, not to mention my various house projects with my new house, I'd definitely probably be dumping a lot more money into this new boat hobby haha
This summer my buddy who is a big boat person directed me to this one as I was expressing interest even though I didn't have a place to store it at the time or anything to pull it. However I still was pretty sure I was going to buy it for like $3200-3500. Then I broke my foot on my motorcycle and forgot about it. My buddy knew the guy and he had only mentioned selling it to people never actually advertised. Then now last friday my buddy said the guy finally put a sign on it with $2500 on it. just so happens the last weekend I traded a focus I bought for $1000 to a guy for his 96 chevy k1500 that is in great mechanical shape and I also bought and closed on my first house last month and I have a pretty decent amount of room with a 3 car sized garage and decent driveway space on a dead end street.
So the stars sort of aligned lol.
Anyway, ended up giving $2,000 for the boat. Took a risk as negotiating him to $2,000 was a stretch and I think he only caved since I was there and able to pull it out of the yard where it was sunk into the ground a few inches, that exact moment. The guy swore it was mechanically solid even though he hadn't had it out in water since august 2015.
Took it home put it on the battery charger Sunday morning. Put $20 of gas in it and buddy and I took it down and dropped it into the rough chilly water. Fired right up and we cruised it up and down the river for a good hour beating the tar out of it and checking it all over. Motor runs great, cruises at a good 50-55mph max. Found trailer trim button doesn't work, we had to jump it and for the most part the gauges are all crazy or not working. Otherwise everything else works. Motor runs great. River was really rough but boat handled it pretty well. No leaks or anything.
Main thing it needs is interior work. Mostly cleaning but need a new rear bench seat. Engine cover has a good rip in it too.
Guy said a couple years back covered sitting under a tree through winter, a branch fell through the cover unknown to him so it sat for months until he uncovered it to see the hole and the big branch had fallen right into the rear seat beating it up pretty good.
Otherwise trailer is in good shape with new tires.
Motor is the 5.7 mercruiser.
Big issue is I'm worrying about sourcing any sylvan specific parts for this thing since from what I know Sylvan doesn't support this boat anymore really and these bowrider (is that right for the type of boat?) made by sylvan are pretty rare as is.
Still know nothing hardly about boats but I'm sure I'm about to learn. Will be a good TLC project over winter to get ready to take out next year. Going to try to winterize it first and then do some deep cleaning on the interior. In spring I'll do a basic tuneup on the motor and work with my buddy to sort the electrical issues. I have a build going on my Trans am that will take up a lot of my time/space over the winter so going to keep it simple on the boat for now.
Overall in the past couple weeks I have about $3100 between buying the boat and truck combined so I'm pretty happy with things as they sit!
Here are a couple pictures.
if it wasnt for my trans am and bikes, not to mention my various house projects with my new house, I'd definitely probably be dumping a lot more money into this new boat hobby haha