Man who bought a boat

For pleasure I mechanically restored and repowered my early 60s Sea Ray model 500. The original Fat Fifty is gone and a new 50hp Honda lives there now. The only problem in the last year since installing new motor is getting it away from my daughter, son in law and granddaughters.

I was up in Tomahawk and spied a familiar profile and did a u-turn…soon I was a proud new owner of a $1000 boat motor and trailer. I think they’ll look nice together.

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That hull looks an awful lot like the old Sears hull with a 40-45 McCulloch OB I learned how to ski behind in the mid-70’s. Wonder if SR supplied the hulls?

So, you figure if you have 2, you might get to use 1?

HRG

Nice, our family had one like that.

I got the new girl home today. I only had a short distance to go and the boat was poorly positioned on the trailer, about 1 1/2’ back. I worked on moving trailer hardware and she sits nice now. She needs new bunk boards and keel rollers, and last but not least a bow stop bumper. I think I’ll treat her to a new winch also.

Next I installed new plugs, the ones pulled looked oil fouled, but he said he fogged the motor and hasn’t ran it since. It took a little, but she fired up. I had water muffs installed and soon she cleaned herself out. Shifting seems proper. Tomorrow she will ply the waters of Lake Alice, and while off I’ll tackled the new bunks and rollers. Pictures and report tomorrow.

One last add. I will be checking lower unit lube.

A classic.Nice find clown.

Thats a nice find👍 i heard the antique outboard motor club had to cancel their national meet there this year.

very nice find !!
why is that old boats,especially the first ones we ever boarded are so near and dear to our hearts??
not only that I think we had more fun and caught more fish out of them than we do with the newer stuff and my boat is a 96 Starcraft !! ( with some modern goodies of course )

my first boat ride on the Gulf of Mexico was in a Mark Twain tri-hull with a 140 I/O,ugh !! that was 44 years ago!!!

Today I was”that guy” at the launch. I popped off the motor before arriving. It sounded really good, but when trying to start it in the water, she barely turned over and seemed to lock up. I tried a few times…then a few times more. I made lots of new friends at the launch. Soon I realized with the engine in the water supplying water pressure I must have a leak into the combustion chamber(s). It might be as easy as a blown head gasket. Bad would be a cracked head. Worst would be a cracked block. I wonder how a nice and new Honda 60hp would look on that boat???

I slept on it and decided to do a compression and leak down test with a minor teardown before throwing the baby out with the bath water.