3 replies to this topic

[bstuke]

I had the port motor in my 1989 1800 replaced over the winter. They also replaced the shaft, as it was bent. Fast forward to this past weekend. I have put maybe 10 hours on the boat. I took it over to a friends house and it ran fine. 2 hours later, the boat has water in it above the carbs. the bilge pump is running but cannot keep up. We quickly take his boat off his lift and get mine on his lift. After all the water has drained, we drop it back in, and the leak is coming from the port stuffing box, which the dealer just worked on.

Both motors were hydro locked. Like I said port is new, starboard is maybe 50 hours. Both are SBT Premium.

I have dropped the boat off to the dealer that did all the work on the boat.

My expectation is that they are going to fix everything and not charge me a dime.

Is that unrealistic? What should I expect/demand.

[Kevin Leclair]

I would say it depends on what kind of warranty was agreed upon when the initial work was completed. Keep us posted.

[biffdotorg]

I would say it depends on what kind of warranty was agreed upon when the initial work was completed. Keep us posted.

I would have to agree with Kevin on this. A printed warranty would have to prevail, and my guess is you would be beyond that by now. It's sad you only got 10 hours on your boat this summer, but there has to be some limitation to the amount of time they can cover their work.

Maybe it's just me, but I would say if I dropped some serious coin over the winter into my boat, I would have been itching come spring to go out and break it in right and run the crap out of it. Maybe it is different where we live. Once those sleds are summarized, we are looking for ice-out open water!

This is all thrown out if there is some real obvious way to prove a flaw in their work.

Good luck with it!

[bstuke]

I would have to agree with Kevin on this. A printed warranty would have to prevail, and my guess is you would be beyond that by now. It's sad you only got 10 hours on your boat this summer, but there has to be some limitation to the amount of time they can cover their work.

Maybe it's just me, but I would say if I dropped some serious coin over the winter into my boat, I would have been itching come spring to go out and break it in right and run the crap out of it. Maybe it is different where we live. Once those sleds are summarized, we are looking for ice-out open water!

This is all thrown out if there is some real obvious way to prove a flaw in their work.

Good luck with it!

Thanks for the reply. They do stand behind their work, and they will quickly see that there was very little time since the rebuild. I have been in and around the water since a child, and I have never seen a catastrophic failure like this on a stuffing box. We had to have someone hold the bellows while we towed the boat to a ramp, or else the boat would have sank. I am thinking flaw.

And I hear you on the usage thing, but we do have more than one week of summer down here in Georgia, so we spread it out a little! You do have more lakes...

Seriously, we bought the boat because it was a twin with jets, so redundancy and more safe than a prop for our kids. They are mostly grown now and we don't use it as much, and certainly don't run the crap out of it any more. We mainly cruise around in it with friends.

We were at the point that we were going to sell it after this summer, and get a 21-22ft inboard, something with a merc/volvo EFI that would be less maintenance overall.

I'll update as soon as I hear something...