Has anyone replaced the original ventless unit on the 460 Voyager with a vented unit? We have rarely used our unit because it is not very efficient, but with COVID, I'm less inclined to use marina laundry facilities so we are considering options for replacing it. Thank you!

I have a small issue I think. I believe I have some water in the bottom of my main tanks. Reason I say this is my boat is equipped with a diesel heater which I never really got to work. I pulled it out last year and rebuilt it but still it does not function properly. Played with it for the last couple of days and noticed lots of water in the line therefor giving me a no start fault. Primed the lines until all was clear and then she fired up and ran like a champ for a few hours before I shut her off. Last night I decided to try her out, she started up fine but a few minutes later she conked out and once again a no start fault.

The filter is transparent so I can see there is once again water in there. My Racor main engine filters hardly see any water by the end of the year, in fact I just emptied them yesterday, maybe 1/4 ounce total for both.

Theory, my heater draws from a very small 2mm ID diameter copper fuel line inserted from the top of my starboard tank. I am thinking this tube is inserted almost to the bottom and therefor can suck up water in the tank. I am going to try to loosen the retaining nut and pull up the intake a couple inches to see if it solves my heater water problem however this would indicate I do have a little water in the tank/s

Question, is this normal to have a little in there or should I be looking at getting this out of the tanks. If so, how is this done?

My season is just about over. Fact of life up here in the northern climate. All in all a good season considering the Covid situation. Almost all of our boat club activities were cancelled because of the situation.

Friday was the day that I decided to winterize those things i do myself on my Carver. I ran all the water out of the onboard water tanks and then I drained the water heater. Then I used my small air compressor to blow out the water lines. After that I put in 15 gallons of -50* pink stuff. Running the pump again I ran the pink stuff through all the water lines. Task one was complete.

Then I disconnected the water line to the head from the seacock. Getting another gallon of the pink stuff I hit the switch and ran that through the toilet and into the holding tank. Task two was complete.

Next I put 1/2 gallon of the pink stuff through the shower sump. Task three completed.

That is pretty much the things I do. I will let the marina mechanic winterize the engines and the A/C system. One other thing I did when I ran the pink stuff through the water lines was to fill a couple of the empty jugs with pink stuff. Then I poured that into the bilge and ran it through the bilge pumps to winterize them.

I plan to put in fuel stabilizer into each tank add about 45 gallons of fuel to each tank then take the boat out for one last little run the head to be hauled out on or about the 23rd. The 2020 season is over now thinking about 2021.

Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun aboard my jetski this season. Put 38.3 hours on the ski about 16 on the boat.The jetski was hauled and winterized and is now in winter storage waiting for spring 2021. I hope all of you had as great a season as I did all in all in spite of the situation we all faced.

Hoping 2021 will be better.

Hey all, I have aa 1989 3607 with Crusader 350hp/454's. I'm getting old and cranky and when I pull into my marina there is always a loud boat following me. No wait, it is me, the echo from enclosed spaces bothers me. Has anyone installed mufflers on a 3607? On the starboard side there is room to replace a 4" fiberglass tube in the exhaust, but on the port side it is not a straight shot and is all flexible hose. Anyone done this project before? Any suggestions woud be helpful. I'm looking at Centek Vernatone as I think they will fit.

Thanks for the help.

My new-to-me Riviera 28 is parked in my yard for the winter, but I need to drain the water tank and the hot water tank, and the bilge. According to the manual, there is a bilge drain plug to be found near the engines. Otherwise I will use the shop vac and put some pink in.
The manual doesn't really make it clear how to drain the tanks. Any tips would be appreciated!

I have arranged for the local marina (small boat marina) to come and winterize the engines and shrink wrap the boat.

Does anyone have any ideas on how my gray keeps filling up when everything on my boat is off? I drained my fresh water tanks and turned my water pump off and some how my gray tank is still filling up with water!

I have looked and watched it and there is no water actively draining into it...is it possible that it is somehow back filling sea water?

My gray sump pump is currently not working...could that be letting water back flow in?

Any experience or advice greatly appreciated...thanks!

Well, 3297 is my first boat. I bought it in May knowing that it needed fuel tanks but not knowing much else about it. It had sat in a yard for several years on the hard. After struggling with a bad cooling pump on the port engine, then a bad port fuel pump that failed and pumped 4 gallons of fuel into the block via the weep tube on the fuel pump (kinda a long story) then working through all the gear like a bad nav light, bad horn, rebuilding the head pump, exhaust manifolds, risers and elbows on the starboard engine, replacing the chart plotter and radio, and more, we finally got to take the boat out.

We got about 30 total miles and our season ended. The starboard engine is Tango Uniform. I can’t say exactly what order the failures happened, but we were WOT crossing the river headed for the reef to do some fishing when we started to suspect a problem. After a few minutes we noticed the temp gauge on the starboard engine was pegged. We shut it down and limped out to the reef on one engine and dropped anchor so we could at least fish until tow boat got there.

Once we were back in our slip, I tried to start the starboard engine and it was cranking really slowly. The first thing I found when I opened the engine room hatch is that the brand new alternator/water pump belt had jumped off and was ruined. I started pulling spark plugs and when I pulled the #5 plug, about a pint of water poured out. The first thing I did was put my air compressor on #5 to do a leak-down test. It held 100# of air no problem with no obvious leaks. Compression tests showed 160,120,120,160 on the even side of the engine. I put the compression guage on #5 and got 0#. When I took it back off, more water poured out.

The boat is raw water cooled. I shut off the raw water to the engine and disconnected the hose to the exhaust manifold, cranked it a few times and water blasted out of the odd side of the engine all over my fuel tank. It looked like it was from #3 and #5. Upon closer inspection, several spark plugs looked like they might have evidence of water. My theory at the time was that when the engine overheated, the head cracked or warped letting water into the cylinder. Hydraulic lock might have broken a rod and with the piston not moving I got 0# but water still leaking in. The borescope showed pistons and valves moving like they should which blew that theory. Time to pull the thing apart.

When I pulled the exhaust I found evidence of water in all the exhaust runners on that side. Time to pull the head. When I pulled the head the gasket looked good. I found lots of water in all 4 cylinders and the #3 exhaust valve has a bite taken out of it. I’ve seen lots of valves fail over the years, but never quite like this.

I’m still not sure exactly what all failed. The obvious common links between the 4 cylinders are head gasket, intake and exhaust. If it was the intake, the way the split-plane manifold works, I would have expected two cylinders on each side to have water, not all 4 on one side. The water in the engine in the pictures is from after turning the raw water off, cranking it a bit and then sitting a couple days so it almost certainly rules out the (brand new) exhaust manifold as the culprit. Anyway, the upshot is, my engine is toast. Time to build a pair of new engines and hope for a full season next year.

PS. Before anyone mentions the single host clamp on the fuel line, all the OEM fuel lines are threaded fittings. The barbed fitting was for the test run. A whole set of new lines with proper threaded fittings will be part of the new setup.

Well I took the plunge and got the boat I've always wanted. Surveyed great, very little work to do other than typical things like getting serviced...maybe new belts hoses and coolant on the gen set. Just hoping with 1300 hours the engines last a few years without needing Overhaul.

I know the sofa and dinette cushions are not perfect....does anyone know the dimensions for the sofa so I can get a new one?

Also, for boat lettering/decal....What is the dimensions on the transom?? How would I remove old boat name???

I haven't picked up boat yet...it's inCleveland, and I'm in Chicago...going to haul it out next week....

Hey guys, I'm trying to become a Carver owner. Put an offer in on a nice 430 Carver CMY with cummins 6BT's . We really like the layout and this boat is very clean for the year with some nice upgrades. During the engine survey they noted (and I saw as well) an "alarming" amount of blowby coming out of the starboard engine. It ran fine but did get pretty hot, noted 220 deg at WOT. Oil samples came back with 633 parts iron on that engine listed as critical. The mechanic says the blowby combined with what would be high cylinder wear tells him the engine needs to be replaced.

The seller was quick acknowledge and is willing to deal. The brokers first offer is to split a new engine at estimated 30k.

I'm considering the boat still but my question to you guys is how hard is it to get engines out of these? The mechanic said sometimes they have to take out a window to get them out. Just wondering how much of the boat has to come apart to help me decide if its worth going this route and having the engine replaced.

Thanks for any info.

Well, partial rewire. While troubleshooting a spotlight issue, I decided to finally tackle some of this and clean up some wiring. I thought I had a "before" picture, but I can't find it. Just imagine a bit of a rat's nest of wire.

First, I had to make a mounting board. Under the helm there really is no where to mount anything except a small 3/4" x 3/4" blocking at the top and a 2.5" band at the bottom. So I had some old marine teak plywood and made a mounting board:


Getting it in behind all the existing wiring was a chore, but I got it in. You can see the old terminal strips which are just push-on connectors. That was the standard back then. They were screwed into the top but I had to remove them to mount the board. They get corroded after a while and develop some resistance so you have to periodically clean them off if you want them to work correctly. You can also see the tach syncronizer hanging. It was also mounted up near the top but since there wasn't a big enough surface it was just kind of hanging diagonally.


Here are the new terminal blocks with some of the wiring going in. Most of the stuff has their own fuses inline. I had to add a couple more. I had thought about putting in a fuse block like I did in the lower station (different thread for that) but I wanted it to be accessible without having to unscrew a panel. This will be a huge upgrade over the push-on terminal blocks.


In this process I found out that the spotlight was never actually feeding from the spotlight breaker provided on the main panel. The breaker was there and all the wiring provided by Carver, but whoever installed the spotlight just tapped into the bridge feed (there's a 25A breaker and feed for the bridge and a different one for the lower station). I was able to wire it in correctly so now that's on it's own breaker like it should be.