New Member. First boating project. 1985 Dixie Custom 170 Runabout - Pic Heavy

[TchDwnUGA]

Hi everyone,

Longtime lurker. I finally joined because I picked up a project boat almost a month ago. It's a 1985 "Dixie Custom 170"(never heard of the brand) runabout with a matching 75hp Merc. The boat was listed as having a locked up engine, so I was able to pick it up cheap ($750). It looked to have good potential and I had a sneaking suspicion that i could get the engine unlocked. My goal for the boat isn't a show winner, but to be a decently nice and relatively inexpensive toy for the weekends. This is my 2nd boat overall. I've also owned an 07 Tahoe Q6. Bit of a change of pace with this one.

I brought her home and spent the entire weekend on just trying to get her cleaned up. The floor and the transom seem solid, but the seats were complete garbage. Took quite a bit of effort, but I got it mostly cleaned up.

Here are the pics in order of how she looked before cleaning. I'll post up a second set of pictures of after cleaning it up.

 

[TchDwnUGA]

After cleaning all the hidden junk out from it (previous owner was a big supporter of Bud Light) and quite a bit of elbow grease (and magic erasers, Fast 505, and hull acid) it came out pretty swell (pun intended). Realized I didn't take any real comparison type shots, but just take my word in that it cleaned up tremendously. Pictures don't do it justice.

 

[TchDwnUGA]

I'll post the rest of the updates in this post:

I've been collecting parts and things here/there for the boat the past few weeks.

List of stuff ordered:

-New wheels/tires, spare tire mount, and a new spare
-New 1100gph bilge pump with switch
-Lots of wiring of different sizes. Only the tach worked, so I planned on rewiring the dash
-Power dist block to mount under the dash to keep the wiring to the rear to a minimum
-Class 31 battery tray for the nicer deep cycle that came with the boat
-2 pairs of oldschool Kove Audio 4" speakers
-Trailer wiring kit
-AeroKroil and Kreen to pour into the cylinders to hopefully unlock them (more to come on this)
-New cigarette lighter and a dash mountable USB charging dock
-New trim soleniod

Lets first talk about the engine:

It was certainly locked up. Wouldn't budge even a smidge. I pulled all 4 plugs, tiled the engine as high as I could get it (lowered the front of the boat to help) and filled each cylinder with a mixture of Kreen and Aerokroil. I let the mixture sit for 2 days. I returned to it with an impact gun and a large breaker bar. Got a slight wiggle after going back and forth with the impact. Once I achieved the desired wiggle, I attacked it wit the breaker bar. After a brief 45 second struggle, she was 360* free!

Needless to say I was excited. It wound up spinning over pretty well, but i wanted the local trusted boat mechanic to take a look at it before I went any further to see if it was worth fixing even though it had been locked. Longer story short. He cleaned the carbs, put more cleaning stuff in the cylinders, and pulled a good bit of water from the tank, but alas, she ran excellent (out of the water at least!).

This motivated the heck out of me to get to work on the other issues, so this past weekend I dove in!

I wound up mounting the speaker, bilge pump, bilge pump switch panel, rewiring all the gauges (all working minus the speedo now), mounted the new spare tire mount with the spare, and mounted the new wheels/tires.

Still had some time left in the day so I wound up diving into a big project; The seats.

Was looking at different seating options, but I was struggling to find something that would fit the boat without major modifications, especially since most of the seats I was seeing were in the $500+ range for the pair shipped. I got to thinking and figured I could do better than that for a significantly better price.

I decided to build my own seats/seat base! Even gained usable storage out of it!

Here are the pictures of all the work done!:











Was so happy with how the seats turned out, that I decided to pull it to the local landing and give her a test ride! Good and bad came from this test. Truck pulled the boat great with the new tires, the boat fired right up, and we took off!

Chugged around at 1/2 throttle for 10 minutes or so, then decided to open her up. She got up on plane pretty quickly and seemed to be chugging right along, until after 30-40 seconds it started to lose power as if it were running out of fuel. Wound up sputtering out. Checked the fuel ball and it was empty. Pumped it up and the engine refired immediately. Repeated this 3 more times (fire, 1/2 throttle, WOT, fuel starvation, pump ball, rpt...). It was at this time that the started locked itself in the lowered position. I didn't have anything handy to hit it with, so we just paddled back to dock.

Boat is currently back at the shop with him diagnosing the fuel issue. So far the fuel pump on the engine seems good. He's thinking that there is still some water in the fuel and that the plastic Atwood connector on my fuel line may be starving it.

Here are the pics from us taking it out and our paddling adventure back!

No more pics or updates to give at the moment! Thanks for reading through this book!

Hope to get some good advice on where to go from here! All told, I'm still under $1900 invested in the boat, counting the boat.

 

[gddavid]

I would suggest using an external tank to run the engine off until you are sure that you don't have any water in the boat's fuel tank. You could rule out bad fuel and if the built in tank turns out to be the problem, you have a way to enjoy the boat until you get the tank sorted out.

It could also be a plugged vent line, but it doesn't sound like you were running long enough for that to be your culprit. You can try running with the gas cap loose to rule this out. I would suggest installing a fuel water separator/filter.

 

[Carpenter2486]

nice boat! I have the same one only in abit more in-depth stages of renovation. hopefully you figured out your engine problems.

 

[TchDwnUGA]

Thank you! There seemed to have been more water in the tank. I was able to get some more of it out and was able to take the boat out for a weekend. Got up to 32mph with myself +1 and 28 with 5 onboard.

Didn't idle too well, but i just acquired an 87 115 i'm going to try and swap onto it, which will hopefully run significantly better!

 

[Carpenter2486]

Very cool! They are a nice boat. I also have an 87 115 evinrude. It should go 44mph and 41 with passenger. Glad your having a nice time with the boat. If yiu choose to. Cleaning the carb should help your idling issue!