I've been busy the past few weeks ... trying to work on the Eluder as much as possible, plus my kids have been back in school for over 3 weeks so I'm helping with math and science homework a lot. The boat is now basically complete
with a few little things to attend to which I can get to whenever I get around to it. So..... I took it out for the first time tonight (more about that later.....
)
First a few of the final touches:
I made a hatch cover for the front bulkhead and got it installed:
I got tired of my son complaining about putting on ski and wakeboard bindings in the water, so for the Checkmate I cleaned up some of the original swim ladder parts and used them on a swim platform (with the Checkmate logo of course).
JT Patroni was kind enought to sell me an old lower unit for cheap with the understanding that I was buying a serviceable case and I might end up needing to use the gears out of my other one with a cracked case. When it arrived I spent a lot of time playing with it on my workbench and it felt like the gears were ok so decided to go ahead and try using it as is. I filled some pits it had in it, sanded, sanded, and sanded some more, and primed it and then painted it with lacquer from a spray can. It's not perfect, but certainly passes the 5 foot test.
And here are a few more photos of the (nearly) finished product:
I ran the engine on muffs two times last week and it just seemed kind of rough. I know that without any backpressure it won't run the same as when in the water, so I was just kind of hoping it was no big deal. When I put the boat in the water tonight it took awhile but finally cranked, I started backing away from the trailer, and it stalled. So there I sat off the end of the ramp blocking all 3 lanes trying to get it re-fired. It finally started, but idled like crap. I made it over to the dock (with the engine quitting 2 more times in the 100 feet over there), tied up and parked my truck.
Once I made it out of the no wake zone and hit the throttle it was a DOG. Hole shot sucked, acceleration sucked, and top end sucked
. The best I could get was about 55 (on the speedo, not GPS, so ???) at 4800 rpm (but it did throw a nice rooster tail
). I had good water pressure (25 psi) so I imagine the jack plate can come up some more (center of prop is 3 inches below the pad), but I get the distinct impression that won't help much and that the 25 inch pitch Renegade is too much prop for this engine. Based on what a few others on here have suggested for the Johnson 200 I'm surprised at the horrible performance with this prop. That brings me to something else....
This engine (I found it on ebay of course) was obviously put together from non-matching components. The guy that sold it to me (DON'T EVER BUY ANYTHING FROM FRANK MATHEWS IN SAVANNAH, GA.) claimed that the powerhead is a factory remanufactured unit, but I haven't been able to match any part numbers from it to online parts diagrams so I can't say for sure what I've got. I'm starting to wonder if it's only a 150 .... besides the lack of power with this prop, when I put the lower unit on I wound up having to adjust the shift rod height to match the specs for the 150/175 to get it to shift correctly. Hmmmm????
Meanwhile .... After running up and down a section of the lake a few times getting used to the handling and trying to get a little more speed out of this engine the overheat horn came on, so I backed off the throttle and idled back to the dock (I had good water pressure the whole time). It stalled a couple more times in the no wake zone and was really idling bad now (but the overheat horn did go away). Just as I was getting near the dock it stalled again, I got it running just in time (I thought) to keep from drifting into rocks. It took a lot of throttle just to get it to idle, and just as I was shifting into reverse the engine "caught" (and shifting into reverse at over 3000 rpm ain't good), I heard and felt things I knew weren't good, and all of a sudden I don't have reverse anymore. My son was a hero and jumped in just in time to keep us off the rocks.
Other than the fact that the boat felt very solid at 55, tonight basically sucked.
Looks like my son will be stuck skiing and wakeboarding behind my little fish-n-ski until I can get the engine sorted out. I did a compression check when we got home and that seemed ok (though lower than I would have thought - between 70 and 80 on all cylinders). One spark plug was way cleaner than it should have been, so tomorrow I'll be checking to see if that cylinder has spark.
