On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:05:43 -0700, jps wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:52:22 -0400, Captain Zombie of Woodstock
wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:22:14 +0000 (UTC), wrote:
Wizard of Woodstock wrote in
:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:12:25 -0700, jps wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:27:25 -0400, Captain Wizard of Woodstock
wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:20:07 -0700 (PDT), wf3h
wrote:
The gospel is that one gets a survey done. Has anyone found this
useful, apart from your own experience looking at a boat, especially
for cheap ($10K) boat? Is it worth it to get a survey done since on a
28' boat this costs about $600 in the NY area.
Well, let me put it this way. I'm pretty familiar with problems and
such as far as the hull goes and I'm handy around engines - know what
to look for in a general sense.
A few years back, I became really interested in a early model Topaz
28' sportfisherman - twin 350s. I looked that boat over for three
days before I committed to buy it - put the 10% down and called a
surveyor, set up an appointment and off we went.
He spent a whole five minutes before the $13,000 deal was off.
That should tell you something.
Do what you will, but it can be money well spent. And they aren't as
vague as you seem to believe - their rep is on the line and they have
to tell it like it is or they are going to get insurance companies on
their asses if something happens.
What did he catch?
No baffles in the exhaust, sea water had gotten up into the engines
and they were siezed solid.
While I'm not debating that a survey is a good idea, if you couldn't tell
both engines were siezed in three days of looking, without a survey, you
should pick a different hobby. Maybe you have money to burn, but to me,
that's like spending $600 for somebody to tell me there's a foot-sized hole
in the hull. Survey or no, I would do my own preliminary check of the
obvious before I shelled out for a pro. At a minimum, that would include
starting all engines.
Ok genius - you start your engines on the hard - I'll wait.
It makes sense to have the hull and systems checked before doing the
mechanical. But you could certainly check compression on the hard.
Imagine pulling a plug might have told the story...
Probably, but that's the job for the surveyor. I did a external
check, did the bilges, nothing appeared out of place and the engines
didn't look abused in any sense - clean, fairly new. When I pulled
the dip sticks, the oil was dark, not milky - that seemed to be
sufficient. With no batteries on the boat, it also would have been a
problem.
If it had been an outboard, probably a little different. I never even
thought of looking at the exhaust to check for baffle problems.
I just learned something new the other day about inboards - one of the
mechanics at the dealership I'm associated with was working on a
Mercruiser - 5.7 and when he fired up the engine, I heard this
clacking noise - asked him was it was, it was the exhaust baffles.
Don't mess with things you don't know about.