Kyle and I ran out for a quick test drive after fixing blower. It worked great and actually moved air out of the bilge. It probably helped that I rerouted the hose so it was not crushed behind the exhaust manifold. The capped through hulls didn’t leak either. Two for two on Sunday. We ran for about an hour and saw a gps speed of 30 mph at 3200 rpm. We got the rpm’s up to 4000 but that is when we were making the video so not sure how fast. I am not sure how accurate a phone gps is anyway. 30 mph will be more than enough on the ocean on even a perfect day anyway. One step closer to being ocean ready!!! Lots of work to do to make the boat a restored classic but it is usable now.
Catching up.
Dawn and I are back from a wonderful few days in Seattle. Beautiful city but rainy and I drank to much coffee. What a surprise. There really is a Starbucks on every corner. We walked all over the city and saw all the major sites. Today is catch up day at work and home. The penance for the trip I suppose. Dawn is hanging a painting tonight at VOX for second Saturday’s show this weekend. I am hanging with the rug rats. I hope to finally get a chance to work on the boat this weekend and maybe toss it in the water at Folsom to log a little more time to get familiar with things. I did get a chance to pull the batteries and throw them on the charger before and after my trip. They seem to be holding a charge and good to go. Now I just have to put them back in.
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Finally, mostly…
We it finally happened after what seemed like and eternity. I have my new trailer for the Sea Ray. They did forget the other spare wheel mount but will be sending along shortly. Other than that the trailer is damn nice! I need to adjust the side guides once the boat settles in so the spacing is correct but other than that it is ready to go. Ford was kind enough not to include a relay with the tow package so technically I still dont’ have brakes yet. A trip to the dealer should fix that. Batteries in the boat got left on during the rains to run the bilge pumps. Apparently they do work but ran down the batteries. It was set to “ALL” which burns down both batteries instead of just one. Argh! Just enough juice to lower the outdrive once we got back to storage. I hope they aren’t ruined as I just bought them. They were the nice a Marine cranking and a dual purpose deep-cycle. I haven’t installed the charger yet so I can’t use it to fix things. I am heading out on business for a few days to Seattle so I can’t work on it this weekend either. Argh!!!! Here are some pictures:
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Still waiting…
I called the trailer shop Tuesday to see if everything was ready for pick up Wednesday. “About that” he said… Turns out that they ordered the wrong axel length. Argh!!! Honest mistake but dang I want my boat back. Summer is right around the corner and I have a bunch of things to do to get it ready.
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Test drive
Yesterday’s test drive went well. No overheating and she ran well. With trib tab issues I was able to get a top speed of 32mph out of it at around 4,000 rpm. Only at little water in the bilge after 45 minutes on the lake. I think I have a slow leak in one of the petcocks. One is rusted open and needs to be replaced so I kind of expected that. It is the one that is the poor installation to start with. My Dad and Kyle went with me and Victor met us out there with his boat as a chase boat. That was a hugh piece of mind for me, thanks Victor. We ran around at various speeds for about 45 mintues and the engine temperature stayed between 170 and maybe 185/190 the whole time. It is hard to tell as the guage scaling is kind of poor to start with. I also don’t know if the guage it reads correctly. The boat runs comfortably around 3200-3300 and 24-26mph. Kyle at one point decided to ride in the crows nest and he froze his butt off. I left him up there for a while just to mess with him a little.
Docking at either end of the trip was a little chaotic as I and still learning the throttle and inertia and Kyle is learning to work a dockline and cleat. He is still trying to use muscle over leverage and friction. All and all a good day. Today I am going to fiddle with the trim tabs and trace out some of the wiring then put it back in storage for the week.
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