First post to the group! I have not owned a boat before and I am
looking at purchasing a 1988 Four Winns 160 Freedom from a co-worker.
They are the second owners and have had the boat for about 7 years. It
has a 3.0 Mercruiser and a OMC outdrive. The floor appears to be solid
and they say they haven't had any problems with the floor. The
interior is in great condition, no rips or tears in the seats. The
hull appears to be in good shape, minimal marks, no gouges. They are
selling because they don't use it much anymore and there is a problem
with the outdrive. What they are telling me is they had some work done
on the upper gear case and it wasn't filled properly with oil at that
time. They ran it once on the local lake for about 10 minutes and put
it back on trailer. They said they knew something was wrong because it
sounded different. That was Father's day weekend. It has been in
their garage since then. I have an appointment to have the outdrive
looked at next week by the only local shop that works on OMC outdrives.
This scares me a bit. Don't know anything about any type of outdrive,
but why is only one shop willing to work on them? The shop gave me an
estimate of anywhere from $500 to $3,000 depending on what it needs, I
wasn't expecting any different, as they haven't seen it yet.

Thay are asking $1,000 obo for the boat as is and includes the trailer.
Seems to me that if the outdrive can be fixed for $500 to $1,000, this
might be a nice way to get into boating.

Thoughts? - Positive or negative welcomed - Thanks!

Rob