Nice looking boat :) I love my '83 Express Cruiser although a tad bigger then that 245 you're looking at. If it's in good shape it would probably be worth close to $10k anywhere here in Colorado but as others have said it is a buyers market at the moment.
My only word of caution is that you may...
I believe my engine compartment is about the same size as your '86 260 Sundancer heathery1215, but with the twin V6's there isn't much room to get to anything in there. I spend most of my time laying on the deck hanging upside down in there to work on anything - should make tearing the top end...
It doesn't appear that "devil" has been back so I guess he might have been scared away... I think that I would have been offended had I gotten a reply like that to one of my posts (being relatively new to the forums here) but it would not have likely made me go away...
heathery1215: Thanks for...
Wow - awesome job there. Nice to see the older Sea Rays refurbished instead of scrapped. So many old Sea Rays get scrapped in my neck of the woods because people just don't want to put in the effort to keep them in good repair since they are looked at as "just another old boat"....
Nice boat...
Just got to taking the plugs out this afternoon - sometimes work just gets in the way of the much more important things in life... lol
Anyway, all 6 cylinders had water in them but once the plugs were out the engine turns over quite nicely - very smooth - no odd noises at all. I put copious...
Thanks for the suggestion on the Dawn dish soap - worked beautifully. Now that the engine compartment is squeaky clean I can do something with it. :)
When I sucked the muck out of the engine I wound up getting 4 gallons of lake water and only about 2 oz of oil so it had displaced all of the...
Daddubo: Thanks for the suggestion of simple green, I didn't think of that. I was planning on using some Super Clean but I'm concerned that it would damage the fiberglass - it's some pretty caustic stuff. I may try some liquid laundry soap too like Tide or something. At any rate it's going to be...
sprink56: Probably won't get a chance to tear into anything until this weekend, and I've got a lot of cleanup work to do in the engine compartment before I can do anything. That oil mixed with water sludge is barely even draining out bilge and it's way too thick for the bilge pump to pump out...
That's a great resource for rebuilt engines - thank you for sharing it with me.
They don't list a 3.8 but I'll give them a call and see what I can find out.
It seems that the 3.8 or anything for it other then gaskets are just not available other then used.
jffacets: Barr Marine (barrmarine.net) lists manifolds for the old Buick V6 used I believe until the early 70's sometime and the newest V6 which is the 4.3 (center riser) but not for the 3.8 (rear riser). :(
I am looking at the possibility of changing both engines out with 350's (5.7). I guess...
capecodcruiser: Yes, I am very aware of that (thanks for the heads up though... lol). Unfortunately, there appear to not be any 3.8 V6 OMC manifolds available anywhere. None of the local marine shops can get them at any price. So, replacing the manifolds are simply not an option - not sure how...
Ever have your bilge look like a 5 gallon McDonalds chocolate shake exploded in there?
Last weekend I decided to get the boat ready for the season and was all excited to get her out this weekend. I ran both engines in the driveway with the muffs for well over 30 minutes to get things all up to...
You'll have to find the HIN to determine the year and model exactly. It sure looks a lot like my old '78 SRV-195 except for the drive. I don't know what years the runabouts were available with Mercruiser vs. OMC.
Discouraging first day on the water this season yesterday... :(
Need an OMC 3.8 V6 engine - the closer to Colorado the better.
If you have one let me know - thanks...
tdappleman, thanks for that link too.
Still not the correct manifold, but at least that's one that specifically indicates a 3.8l engine. The risers on mine are just like the OMC V8 version that are at the very back of the manifold and connect to a rubber tube that then connects to a kind of "S"...
Frank, Thanks for the wishes... :)
I plan to keep it on a lift since it is an I/O boat. My biggest concern now is how long the original OMC drives will last even being on a lift and flushed regularly. Most of the local OMC guys and several I've talked to online have said they would be surprised...
Thanks for the links :)
Problem is that neither of those sites have the right manifolds. :(
Osco has 4cyl, inline 6, and V8 manifolds, none for a V6.
Barr has two types of V6 manifolds but neither are the right ones.
Basiclly if you look at this one...
I love my boat, it's the perfect size as it's big enough to spend even weeks aboard, has all the amenities we need, but still small enough and powerful enough for water sports such as skiing, tubing, etc. Plus it handles awesome, gets on plane very quickly, cruises at 42mph at over 5000'...