shellone
Seaman Apprentice
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2009
- Messages
- 48
The reason why I need to ask for help is that in my summer vacation place under the sun of Tuscany, Italy, I now have three boats, all with Mercruiser engines, two of them (Chaparral 205 SC and SeaRay EC 250) are 1994 7.4 Thunderbolt, one has a Alpha 1 Gen 2, the other a Bravo 3 drive. Unfortunately, during my times of presence here, it is impossible to find technicians to do maintenance or repair. So I have been doing my maintenance myself (oils, filters, pumps, carbs, ignition etc.) but after almost four years need some additional works done ... starting with the risers. My first question, unusual for these pages: do you think I might find an expert technician willing to fly over to Europe and do a month's worth of work on Mercruiser engines (the third, in a RIB, is a 5.0 MPI) and drives? Attached you find the serials of the engine that in my eyes needs most care. Alternatively, would it be a good idea to learn by doing and start replacing the risers myself (incl. all that needs to be done on the occasion) and then do additional diagnostics and repairs as they say rising to the occasion ? I am a trained technician on motorcycles and motorcycle engines and have a quite well equipped garage as for that, willing to invest in any infrastructure and tools after, several times, I have brought the boats in for service and was happy, weeks or months later, to get them back with no repairs done. Does anybody have a service in mind that works remote, i.e. that I can hire to follow the works I might have to start doing myself from home ? I know that finding spares will be difficult, because even a simple impeller or carb repair kit I need to order from back home in the US ... but FedEx is quite fast. I would welcome your suggestions as to what would be the best plan of action. As for the low compression, on the specific engine I attached the serials of, it was 11 on all eight, nor it is 9 on all eight, which tells me I need to do some more and more difficult works than before, and I would start with the risers because they are 6 and 9 years old and I do not fell comfortable running tests before replacing them (actually, on all three engines).
