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Larry

wrote in news:1163011739.561679.79410
@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com:

Yes, I am learning and will never buy another SeaRay. However, I have
learned much from both boats, which is not a bad thing.

'97 Sea Rayder F16XR2 jetboat with Merc 175 Sport Jet....

The seats were made by some Tennesee furniture company of cotton-backed
vinyl that was translucent so you could see the mildew rot grow inside
the seat cushions caused by the cheap, water-keeping foam stapled to the
plastic bottoms bolted flat against the seat cups so that every time you
got up, any water trapped under the seat was sucked up into the foam
which never dried...a great place to grow mildew and slime. 3 sets of
seats didn't cure it, all made alike, of course. The last batch looked
as bad as the first.

There was a cotton-wadding-padded panel along the port bulkhead covered
with the same crap vinyl. This bugtrap was stapled to a piece of plywood
from a packing box that wasn't coated in any way. Any water that ran
behind the unsealed panel, soaked into the bare plywood box, rotting it.
The resultant rot ran down the bulkhead onto the cockpit deck leaving an
ugly brown trail puddling up on the deck below it. I never dared snap-in
the carpet the boat came with because the stain was hard enough to get
off the gelcoat. It would never come out of the cheap carpeting. When I
dumped it, the carpet was still new.

Instead of mounting the cheap car radio with the "marine white front"
INSIDE of the boat where the water spray couldn't eat the open-frame
radio alive, wonderful Sea Ray left the whole bottom of the console open
so water splashing up on the deck was sure to attack everything inside
the dash because the damned thing had no bottom, whatsoever. I finally
decided a SEALED VHF marine radio would be more useful than the stereo.
I had it plugged into the stereo speakers, which was great.

The electrical system was designed by an idiot. The fuses were
distributed throughout the boat in the strangest places. The radio fuse
was located on the engine compartment bulkhead. The engine fuses were
either inside the panel behind the Morse throttle or on the engine itself
behind some stuff. There was no "fuse panel"...just inline fuses
designed by idiots. Many things I don't think were fused.

The fuel tank, a 25 gallon polyethelene tank was set between two fore-aft
stringers UNDER the cockpit deck. They had great side supports.
Unfortunately, the aft end was supported by two little plastic angle
brackets about 2" long that slowly ate into the soft, cheap poly tank,
threatening to hole it. So, I had to build in a brace behind the tank
across to support 25 gallons of gasoline pounding, REALLY POUNDING, in
any waves. 25 gallons X 6 pounds per gallon = 150 pounds of fuel
supported by two little plastic brackets you'd use to hold up a flower
pot. Ah, the FILLER/VENT fittings....another matter. The hoses for the
filler went from the side of the engine/storage compartment where the gas
filler was mounted VERTICALLY on the outside of the gunwale, UP UNDER THE
COCKPIT deck to the FRONT of the gas tank. You didn't have to worry
about tightening it. Hell, you couldn't even SEE it! If the hose fell
off the tank, you'd have to remove the whole top of the boat to get to it
as no access panel ever existed. This is an ABYC-standard Sea Ray? NOT!

The fuel tank had a 1/2" hose barb on it with a little metal shutoff
valve buried up under everything in the storage compartment, on
centerline. The 1/2" hose routed through 3" diameter clamps on the
engine compartment bulkheads to a 3/16" hose barb on the Mercury Sport
Jet electric primer pump on the side of the engine. Because the HOSE was
a whole size LARGER then the engine BARB, it took TWO hose clamps at the
factory to make it stay on....TEMPORARILY! About 6 months after I got
it, one day going down the Ashley River in Charleston, the engine started
running like CRAP! It coughed and bucked and acted like the carb floats
in all 6 carbs got stuck open. I shut her down in the river and opened
up the "trunk" engine-storage compartment. IT WAS 3" DEEP IN GASOLINE!
I won't admit to where I pumped all the gas with my plastic bilge pump
but the crabs looked kind of "woozy" in the pluff mud. Gas evaporates so
they're probably fine, but hung over. The 1/2" hose had fallen off the
3/8" hose barb on the engine from the VIBRATION engines do, fallen down
in the bottom of the bilge and, because of the 3" diameter, let's-save-
Sea-Ray-some-money-on-clamps, clamps the boat going 40 wiggled the hose
way back in the back of the bilge, where the siphon effect caused by a
nearly full fuel tank overcame any kind of anti-siphon valve I never
could find in the cheap gas tank, filling the bilge with gas! Mercury's
Thunderbolt ignition must have had no leaks or it would have blown me and
the whole top of the boat into the air from the ensuing explosion! The
"mixture" of bilge gasoline fumes and incoming air from the engine
sucking a vacuum inside the trunk was a little RICH, but very explosible
as that's what the engine was running on when it was running like crap!

Sea Ray sent me a lifetime supply of 3/8" hose that wouldn't fit the gas
tank, so I installed a proper fuel filter/water separator spinon filter
on the engine compartment bulkhead with 1/2" inlet and 3/8" outlet barbs.
Sea Ray forgot to put ANY kind of fuel filter in my $18,000 jetboat, of
course....on the let's-save-Sea-Ray-some-money program.

The bolts on the Sport Jet main pump froze into the housing because the
Platinum Mercury Dealers don't have enough brains to put antiseize on the
threads before reassembling the pump after the total disassembly stupidly
required to change the oil in the aft pump bearing that had no drain
plug. They also ruined the SEAL keeping the SEAWATER out of the
oil/bearing, but the bearing survived by the time I found it and stopped
going to Mercury dealers for pump service on something far too complex
for Platinum Mercury Dealers to comprehend. I hired a good bubba
mechanic who showed me how to do all this myself and I bought the proper
torque wrench the dealers never used to retorque the bolts per the
service manual I had to buy. Self service was the only way to get proper
pump service, which cured these problems.

Yeah, I'm a real Sea Ray fan, as you can see. Brunswick also owns
Bayliner, you know. It's hard to tell which is which if you can't see
the logo.

Oh, I posted the above problems to this very newsgroup back in '97 and my
Sea Ray of Charleston dealer refused to fix my boat any more when one of
his hacks ratted me out for posting the truth. I told him to stick his
big marine dealership and franchise up his ass....(c;....right in front
of his service manager, who was a genuinely nice guy who deserved a
better job with a more reputable asshole.

I wouldn't buy another new boat from anyone. I don't wanna be the guinea
pig to see what blows up first. I want to buy the survivor's boat after
everything screwed up is fixed!...(c;

My buddy Joe tried to get me to move onto his Endeavour 35 so I could
take over its maintenance. He's got the bigger-boat-wants, again. Every
time he calls me he makes me a better deal....(c;....slip included!

Larry
--
Halloween candy left over.....
Is there a downside?