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Posts: 1516
| How can you check out a used boat dring the winter months? With 18 inches of ice on the nearest lake it's tough to take a test ride. |
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Location: Eastern Ontario | Im also looking for another boat but wouldn't consider anything without a water test |
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Posts: 1767
Location: Lake Country, Wisconsin | set something up where you take it to a dealer and they hook it up and test it and run it... |
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| Hook it up on a hose. The only boats I ever sold were in January. |
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Posts: 566
Location: Elgin, IL | At least run it with the hose and muffs. And do a compression test for sure.
Minimum. |
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Posts: 292
| as a seller ,you wouldnt want to sell without buyer seeing everything work so there is no aftermath . |
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Posts: 373
Location: Maine Township, MN | As stated, run it up on muffs, and perform a compression test on all cylinders. All should be within +/- a few psi of each other. Make sure it shifts into forward, neutral, and reverse smoothly.
At least you'll be able to see how she starts in the cold. I'd also feel the block to make sure they didn't warm it up for ya... If they did, look at the rest of the package and check out the motor last.
Ask probing questions too. How often do you change lower unit lube? What problems have you had? Ect... Most red flags are easily spotted. Don't purchase with your gut. Find out the facts. |
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Posts: 574
| Expect the unexpected.. I've bought 2 boats in the winter now that struggled to get on plane the first time out..
Compression tests and tank test were done on the one, and it checked out fine..
Carbs were dirty/bad and you couldn't tell from the tank test it only went 23ish instead the near 34 it should.. And STRUGGLED to get on plane.. $1300 mistake not putting this one in the lake first..!
The other boat the trim gave out when I tried running it on a hose in my driveway..
Dealer I bought it from assured me everything worked on this boat....! I guess I'm lucky I started it in my driveway instead of taking it to the lake right away.. Not totally sure I could have got it back home with the motor stuck down.. (Yes there's a manual release, but I didn't know that then)
Then a few hundred dollars on used trim unit later I took this on to the lake.. Fudging boat wouldn't get on plane.. 10 mph on a narrow 16 footer with a 40 hp tiller..
Apparently the "geniuses" at this dealer had the wrong plugs in it.. Cheap fix, but wasted another day I could have been out.. Few correct plugs later it did over 30..
Long story I know..
My point though is that on either of these boats the problems would have been obvious with a 5 minute boat ride, but the tests you can have run may not have caught anything besides my trim being messed up..
That all said..... I'll buy another in the winter if I have to.. One of these times everything might work..
Good luck
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Posts: 3913
| One late winter nite I traded a recently-totaled '04 Ford Explorer for a mid 80's Astro bass boat with a bad ass 150 Merc on the back. The motor was good, the trailer was fine, but it turned out the boat was broke. Specifically, the one-hull boat had a cracked transom. (Previous owner failed to ensure water did not enter and rot the wood back there.) That boat boat/motor combo does over 70mph, very powerful, very heavy and with a cracked transom very unsafe. Last fall I sold the whole rig for $500 to a local kid as a winter project for him and his dad. I learned a couple weeks ago that the dad sold the rig to some stranger without telling the buyer about the cracked transom. |
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Buying a used boat in the winter