1976 spectre 23 considering purchase

[cdavisdb]

Outdrives? My preferred power package, but they are much more maintainence, get used to it. The beauty of that old car engine is that it will warn you long before it quits, if you are listening. Get a vacumn guage and a raw water pressure guage on both engines. Fuel pressure if you can find someone to install it correctly. Watch those guages and listen to the engines. They will talk to you. The vac guage will save you many thousands of dollars.

Find a good mechanic and have him go through the drives every year. You will have to look hard to find one. Stay on top of manitainance and outdrives are a great system.Get lazy or cheap and they rapidly become both really expensive and unreliable.

I'm regularly 150-200 miles deep into the Bahamas, every year, with a single I/O plus kicker. No way I would do that with anything else, except maybe a diesal inboard.

Good luck with the boat. Sounds like you found a good one.

[Gmoney28]

Thanks to all who have replied to date , I spoke with my electronics guy and he confirmed he can switch my c80 set up off the 72 Grady make it my main , tie in the radar and relocate A60 as back up . The raw water intake gauge shows me the volume of water based on the pressure at the intake I assume ? Is vac gauge in place to monitor compression on the engine ?
After my discussion with electronics tech it appears I can set up both navigation systems , compass in lighted binnacle , radar , two radios , CD player and marine radio , I know all of this will be on a new 3rd battery set up , I am not sure how much rewiring I will do as it is currently immaculate , but every thing functions off 2 batteries in the motor box . Tech really wants the batteries on the motors only with little else , is a 3rd battery enough , I intend to keep a well charged jump box in the cuddly.
Looked at a valise style life raft , 4 man for around 1200.00 coastal rated . Pray I don't need it .
Epirb, well stocked first aid kit , one in boat , one in ditch bag , hand held in ditch bag , emergency food ditch bag and boat , water, flares in both , hand help GPS , I won a Etrex 10 at the CCA banquet , will that unit pick up off shore ? Rope , knife , sunscreen , pistol , mirror,
Nylon rain gear , frog togs, any suggestions in light weight functional rain gear , don't want to try and muscle a bag with my grundens in it .
What have I left out ? All responses are greatly appreciated and considered .

[cdavisdb]

A vacumn guage monitors engine performance. You can see all sorts of things, poor compression, bad ignition parts, etc. Don't run it under 7 lbs vacumn and save your valves. This is surprisingly tricky without a vac guage and is the cause of a lot of ruined engines. Look up Bushwackers posts on vacumn guages. He is the expert, ex Pratt and Whitney aircraft enginer.

Raw water pressure guage allows you to immediately see crap on the intake, leaks in the water hoses and especially aging impellors, long before they become a serious problem and long before increasing engine water temp will suggest the same isssue. By that time the impellor can be coming apart. Saves getting impellor pieces stuck in the engine and creating hot spots and other nasty issues.

One gadgit I find very useful is a Satelite tracker, Spot or Inreach, They both allow tracking of your boat offshore in almost real time and have an emergency SOS function that runs through a satelite, just like an EPIRB, good backup. Also, the Inreach allows sending and recieving text messages. My wife loves it for keeping track of me in the Bahamas and I don't have to waste diving time looking for a phone after every long passage.

I carry a huge inventory of spare parts and the tools and manuals to use them. If you are doing day trips, thats not necessary, but car engines have lots of small parts that can fail. Consider going through the engine and carrying all the little stuff, ignition parts, water pumps, other pumps, belts, various fluids, etc. Eventually you will need some of that stuff and it feels a lot better to do it yourself rather than come in on one engine or wait for a tow.

[cdavisdb]

One other suggestion, something I considered a requirement. Set up your fuel system with two Racor or similar filters so you can select one or the other with the flip of two valves. A couple of spare filters in the boat and you are proof against almost any dirty fuel problem, with no down time. One day, zero down time might be important.