Carver Owners Forum

Hey! Thanks buddy! Just curious, is there a place to put a build log of sorts or is my random babbling okay here to be ignored? I'll continue to babble until you tell me to stop.


Spent about 10 hours on the boat today. The woman I am paying to clean the interior is doing a phenomical job! (I'm a dirtier not a cleaner) and my dad pitched in as much as he could. She has the forward half of the boat looking brand new.

While her and pops were cleaning, I was getting my starboard side motor ready to pull. I'm going to pull V-drive and all out tomorrow. Where the bilge had so much water in it, it rusted out the output seal on the drive, both of them so I'm going to see how easy it is to do out of the boat before I attempt to do one inside the boat.

And....

Did you know there is a completely separate breaker panel beside the rear door cause I sure didn't. We were talking about how the trim around the cabin comes out so I can recover it and I tugged on a panel and boom, there's why I don't have 12v inside the cabin. It was too late to hook up a battery to do a systems check but first thing tomorrow I want to see all the pretty lights turn on.

Would be great if you started a thread in the Project forum, and posted way too many pictures of your project. Those pictures could help people in the future, especially if you are dismantling interior pieces.
Keep it up!

Agree with Fred... lot of pictures. this is quite an undertaking.

Fraser

Pictures you ask? Oh I have pictures! If a moderator or admin wanted to move this to another section so I'm not constantly bumping my post in the introduction section, please go right ahead.


Today was a good day. Remember the second breaker panel I mentioned in my last post? I now have power to the stereo and interior lights. Didn't try the pumps or blowers today but then again, I didn't turn all the breakers on either. I played with some switches at the helm and didn't seem to get any accessories to turn on. No windlass, no ship to shore radio, depth finder and I'm really crossing my fingers on the Garmin 4212. I hit the power button and the screen did the slightest twinge of a flicker but never turned on. But whatever, I'm more worried about the drives.

Cathy finished all the cleaning that I wanted her to do. She spent almost 20 solid hours scrubbing the interior and it really shows. Boat looks almost brand new inside. I'll worry about the worn out trim at a waaaay later date. Outside is still pretty rough but no sense in messing with that until its running and I'm done spreading greasy hand prints. It really helps to keep the excitement up seeing how quickly she cleaned up. I'll share some more later but here's a couple teasers.

It went from this:



To this:




The starboard motor is out and its not pretty. It's a damn shame too. This motor really was a fresh rebuild. Everything inside looks like it never been ran. 31hrs and its locked up tighter than the liquor cabinet at grandma's. Rings are frozen to the cylinder walls and if I wanted to reuse the block it would have to be cut .040 over and new pistons. I'm leaning towards a rebuilt short block and have the heads tanked and new valves installed. I'll reuse everything else off of this motor. Cam, roller lifters, heads once they get re-redone etc. Hell, I'll probably even use the old oil pump and timing set. As long as the water didn't get to them, why not. Unfortunately the injectors crumbled in my hands when I went to pull the connectors off and the throttle body has seen better days. I'll probably replace all the injectors and the throttle body since pretty girls don't like to be stranded on broken boats. Looking at the fuel pump on the side, I'm realld debating on changing it now too since it'll be way easier outside the boat. The V-drives haven't had any water in them but the output seal is rusted away and all the oil is in the bilge. Both sides are that way. I'm doing the starboard one while its on the ground and I'll probably attempt to do the port side in the boat until I waste 10 hours and get mad enough to pull that drive out anyways.






The bilge is filthy. While the motor is out it's getting a proper cleaning and I have to pull the fuel tank out and drop it off at a welder and pull the prop shaft and prop out to be checked out by a prop shop since thats the corner that dropped off the lift. It'll be nice to have a clean engine room to work with.



I'm not a superstitious person but... The boat was originally named "Victress" and that's how it is registered still. The PO's family decided to surprise him for his birthday and renamed it "Oh Joe" with out doing the ceremony to expunge the old name and the ceremony to rename the boat. Since then he had to replace two motors, the lift it was on broke and he died. Not saying all these things have something in common but you can't ignore the coincidence... I'm not taking any chances. "Oh Joe" has been removed from the transom and she is to be referred to as "Victress" until a proper ceremony can be had.




http://imgur.com/a/QKkup This is a full album of pictures with a bunch of detailed pictures of the engine and the arrangements of various brackets and wiring harness.

You definitely have a project there. The really good thing is she is not that old. I think you have a wonderful base to start from. What you have done so far really shows what a little effort and elbow grease can accomplish.

As to your Garmin GPS, when I bought my 1981 Carver it came with a Garmim 220 GPS. It had not been used in at least 2 years. When I first booted it up it did flicker on and off before finally booting up and becoming operational. Hope you have the same luck and result I did. My GPS has since konked out but that is not so bad as I wanted to update to a newer model so now I have a great reason and excuse to do so.

Definitely keep us all updated as you bring her back to her former beauty. This is a project we all want to follow to conclusion.

How to pull the starboard fuel tank in 11 easy steps



Disconnect and remove engine.
Stare at fuel tank and plan your attack
Pump out 30 gallons of fuel that wasn't supposed to be there
Remove all hoses, ground straps, wires and finally the hold downs
Tilt tank towards you while simultaneously pushing the bottom away
Get fuel tank stuck between the deck and bilge
Pry, tug, curse the person that made the fuel tank too big
Spend 3 hours trying every idea you can think of that doesn't involve cutting fiberglass
Inspect all visible welds for cracks or leaks
Insist that the tank is fine and not leaking
Attach all hoses, wires and finally hold downs and refill with previously removed fuel

I was told by the owner of the marina that I'm in that when they pulled the boat out of the water, the fuel tank was leaking. Being a former auto tech I should have known better than to take a strangers word without confirming the issue. The tank had 30 gallons in it when I pumped it out. I can't see a single sign of any leaks. I was able to look at 5/6 sides and can't see anything that would indicate a leak. Tomorrow I'm going to cap it off and put some compressed air to it and see if it holds. While I have a compressor at the boat, I'll check the port side too. I'm planning on replacing all the fuel line so maybe a really close look at those will give some answers.

Took a dial bore gauge to the motor and the bores are 4.00 meaning its a virgin uncut block. Monday it along with the heads will be dropped off to the machine shop. I'm going to have them punch the block .020 over, slap some pistons in it and call it a day. Everything else in the motor looks fine.

That's it for today. Hopefully tomorrow when I go to pull the prop and shaft I'll have a much easier time.

Dude, you forgot the 12th step... drink lots of beer in between the cussing

Not really much to update, just a bunch of little things fixed. Prop and shaft are out and are getting dropped off at the prop shop tomorrow. I'll be ordering new seals for the Tides Sureseal water box and will replace them before the shaft goes back in. The surveyor mentioned in his survey that the cutlass bearings were at the end of their service life. Hard to believe on a boat with less than 400 hours on it.

Rebuilt the carburetor on the Kohler 7.3e generator ( Kohler Service manual ) and with a little bit of cranking it started right up, then died. Then started, then died and repeat. So much for an easy victory. I'll trouble shoot it tomorrow after work. The factory manual has a great tree to follow.

Starters came in for the engines so with enough time tomorrow I should be well on my way to starting the port side motor. I already know the fuel pump cycles on so fingers crossed it "should" start right up.

Completely unrelated to anything I'm working on but here is a fascinating read about RESONANCE REVERSION and how it affects water flow in a marine exhaust.

Reversion is a big problem on high performance boats. I have water jacketed dry pipes on mine, so no problem at all.
And loud.
So I usually go out with center engine running only, same back in. Once I am almost on the lake, I'll start the outer engines up.
Sailboaters still hate me.

1988 Cougar Kevlar 46' with triple blown 572s

Wow. That's quite the boat. How much power do the 572's make?

Small victories, medium defeat.

Lets start with the good. Once I got some fuel to the generator it would run with the starter button held down and sounded pretty good, for the less than a minute I had it running. According to the trouble shooting tree in the manual I have a bad board. I'm fine with that. I'll double check it tomorrow since it was a little dark when I got around to it.

Hung all the canvas tonight. The Eisenglass (?) is pretty dirty and yellow. Couple are cracked. The canvass is all in great shape with just a couple seams and zipper pulls needing fixed. I also have a full set of floor covers for the cabin.

Does anyone have a scan of the brochure for this boat or a list of options? I would really like to see what was standard versus options.

Got the starter motor on the port side installed. It went "ruh ruh ruh sputter... tink". She's froze solid. I pulled a couple plugs before I tried to start it and they looked like they didn't have very many hours. Pulled the rest and found 2 that with a quick tap had some rust fall out. I'm starting to suspect that the boat sat with the engine covers off for a little bit. Anyways, out it comes. Had to come out anyways since I found the source of the fuel leak in the port fuel tank. On the bright side, it'll be easier to change the output seal on the transmission, and clean the engine room.

That was it for today. Tomorrow I'll work on pulling the motor out, again.