Bygracealone said:
I guess we read the seller's actions wrongly. Figures! Apparently, he was jumping through hoops to make you feel so good about the deal that he was hoping you'd feel obligated to take her, especially after that long drive. Well, good for you bro. I'm glad you didn't fall for it.
First thing I see when I walk up to the boat is a badly redone transom. Outside of the transom was uneven, wavy, a slight crack already. According to him transom was redone from the front side??? Next, I look at a huge puddle of lower unit oil on the pavement! He has an estimate on $300 to fix that (no mention of that at all previously....was told it was a "Low hour motor") If you take the lower unit and move it back and forth there was a lot of play in the pivot shaft (not sure what you call it). I was pissed, said "low hour motors don't have play like that!" Motor was sprayed black under the cover and all over the outside and shaft and lower unit, runs all over the place. Even painted over corrosion on the lower unit! The paint job on the boat was just as bad if not worse. I specifially asked about the quality of the paint job. Was told there was 1 run.....The WHOLE freaking boat had runs all over it....that is where the paint stayed on, there were many areas where the green came off and the original yellow could be seen. The transom was several shades of green different than the rest and was painted with a brush!
In the pics you can see the deck drains in the stern on either side of that hatch. They drain right into the bilge, no longer self bailing!
The straw that broke the camels back for me was when I crawled under the trailer and saw 2 wheels that had the bearing seals falling out and grease all over! These were supposed to be brand new, just installed bearings, remember? I really don't think that trailer would have made the long tow. I was able to wobble one wheel with the weight of the boat still on the trailer! Was assured all 4 tires were good, 2 were just about bald and 2 were fair at best. Looking straight back at the trailer wheels, on one side the after wheel was tilted, not in line with the front wheel! He tells me it's the way he's parked, he's parked on a flat paved parking lot????
I never even hooked up my compression tester, at that point it didn't matter.
Right before I left NY, I called and to make sure I wasn't going to be dissapointed and that everything is as good as he described. I was assure it was. He could have taken pictures of the problem areas, but decided to "hide" those.
I leaned a lesson big time! I'm just so happy in the end it turned out great. If I came home without a such a great boat, you probably would have seen me on CNN.
