Re: First Post: My adventure in boating. 1988 Sea Ray Seville 200 from the beginn
Not too much to report, but thought I'd drop in and update.
Didn't make it back out again. Last weekend when the weather was 80 in Wisconsin and would have been the perfect weekend on the lake for the last voyage of the year, I was in Atlanta on business. :-( REALLY depressed about that.
Spent some time doing better inspections on a lot of the boat yesterday. The bottom actually has some pretty good gouges I'll have to repair at some point. Don't see any that really puncture into the fiberglass, but the gel coat is pretty much scraped off right to the fiberglass in several spots.
Was checking out the trailer, and realized yesterday that my trailer brakes have never worked. I guess the Durango's brakes are much better than I thought. So, I need to buy a new master cylinder for it - may just buy a whole new head. Probably good insurance, since something else could fail, and the same model is only about $160 on Amazon.com. We'll see.
Also sent the VIN off to EZ Loader, and they emailed me back within hours with all the specs on the thing. I was amazed! It's a 1989 trailer, so I'd hazard a guess that it was in fact the original trailer for my parts boat. However, they said it came as a bunk trailer, so somebody must have converted it to roller. Maybe even the Sea Ray dealer that sold the boat. Sure looks original. Trailer brakes too for that matter - looks like they were added at some point.
Plan for the winter: Start with the engine. It's getting pulled and stripped down to a short block and everything gets new gaskets and a good cleaning. If anything looks like it needs it, it'll be getting a full rebuild. The carb absolutely needs a good rebuild, and the heads will be taken to a shop to be checked out and maybe a refresh. Will also be buying new exhaust manifolds, although I haven't decided on a brand or if I go aluminum or not.
The boat itself needs some interior work done. At least one of the jump seats needs a new plywood base (cracked), and the whole headrest/back of boat cover thing needs to be redone with new wood. I'd love to do new material at the same time, but probably will just restore what is there. Engine cover also needs to be rebuilt completely. Trying to think of some new designs for the back area, as I HATE the seat boxes next to the engine - makes it impossible to work on.
I'll start a restoration thread for the work I do on the engine / interior. If the engine work doesn't take too long this winter, I may work on the stringer/floor repair that is needed. I've decided that it's not bad enough to HAVE to do immediately, and I don't want to get stuck with a boat in dry dock for next year, so things will need to be timed out properly. Worst case, I work on the floor & stringers next winter. I will probably pull up the gas tank while the engine is out just to check out the stringers and make sure I don't have a worse problem than I think I do.
