warning to anyone wanting a doral boat

[doral sucks]

We have a 2005 doral elegante with merc 496's and bravo 3 drives. The engine exhaust riser height is incorrect on ours. The spec from merc is that 496 exhaust riser height be 15 inches above the waterline. It is 13 inches on our 2005 and we are ingesting water into the engines. Merc changed the spec to 15 inches in 2003 due to this potential problem. Doral has been aweful to deal with. They could care less about the problem, and won't fix it. Their customer service is a joke. Beware of this problem. We have not had one summer without major issues. Don't ever buy a Doral.

 

[BSAFlash]

Re: warning to anyone wanting a doral boat

Did you buy the boat new?
Is the boat sitting on its proper waterline?
Is the setup original?

According to the setup diagrams the risers should be setup such that the exhaust elbows are not less than 15" above the maximum load waterline. No mention of any other requirements and I can't see why there would be. This dates back to at least 2002.
Note the Max waterline bit. If the vessel is overloaded or excessively listing I imagine no end of problems.

I have a 2006 Elegante and had an excess of problems, almost all related to Volvo.
The Doral component was to fail in bonding correctly on setup (engine isolating etc.) and to fit a modern battery charger to the conductive surface of the bulkhead. The rest of my problems related to inept Volvo approved Monkeys and Volvo Aust' pretending they had no issues with their composite drives dispite World Wide complaints and law suits. The boat itself has had no major problems unlike the SeaRays and Rivieras on our Marina (the SeaRay had the same charger problem and SeaRay was much better to deal with than the 2 movie stars that masqueraded is importers over here).

 

[doral sucks]

Re: warning to anyone wanting a doral boat

Yes we did buy it new.
It is original setup and sitting at proper waterline.
After every type of measurement the boat from factory has exhaust elbows at 13 inches at the most. Doral had the marina figure it their way and it was only 12 inches above the waterline empty. Doral won't stand behind their boat at all and fix it. It is also supposed to have exhaust flappers that were not installed at all. We have had to rebuild a bravo 3 drive and had a battery isolater catch fire in the engine compartment. All factory installed. Luckily I found it smoldering under the gen. All of this in just over 100 hrs of use.

 

[BSAFlash]

Re: warning to anyone wanting a doral boat

The exhaust height issue seems to be a genuine Doral issue and should have been fixed under warranty long ago.
The rebuilding of the drive is just part of the joy of owning a stern drive (and if you think they are bad try owning an IPS system), the Bravo 3 is a reasonably reliable drive unlike the Volvo composite rubbish that I had. If you want to rant about a manufacturer try dealing with Volvo, 1 leg replaced under warranty, 12 months later failed again (repairs at my cost) the other has been rebuilt 3 since 2006 also at my cost (both are about to be replaced before they fail again).
The installation of faulty parts is not really the fault of the installer assuming they worked when tested at the factory and then on commissioning at the dealer. (why didn't the dealer rectify any of this? unless you purchased directly from Doral, over here there is an amount included in the wholesale discount for warranty before the factory get involved).
As to the don't buy a Doral, what would you buy then? Did your hull leak or crack? many others do.