Sea-Doo for Sea-Ray...good trade???

[Matt565]

I have a 1994 Sea Doo GTX in excellent condition with a trailer. A man is offering to trade me a 1978 Sea Ray SRV220 for it (pics here http://www.spearfishing.net/boat.htm ) He says the engine was just rebuilt in April and that everything on the boat works. He said that the engine has 220 horse power and that it is fast enough to pull a skier. Is that true? It has a 1998 trailer with it. So, Sea-Doo with trailer for Sea Ray with trailer...good trade?

Matt

[captainkevin]

Sounds fair boat looks in good shape. Ask if it was used in saltwater or just freshwater. make sure you turn motor from side to side checking for boot leaks, as boots are a pain to replace.

[Matt565]

I looked up the specs for the boat and they said it burns 8 gallons of fuel per hour and top speed is 32. Is that good gas mileage for a boat? Also, will that pull a skier?

Matt

[Drifter]

Many of us would love to have a boat that gets 4 mpg @ 32 mph. But I'm not sure how ski boats typically fare...

[glacierbaze]

Yes, that V8 in a boat that size will pull a skier or two with no problem.

[Kloka-mo']

I learned to ski behind my uncle's SRV220. It was a little older, and had a Buick V6 if I recall correctly. Big wake for ski, but it worked. I would avoid that OMC outdrive, with the rubber bellows (surround) though. They had a nasty habbit of rotting, and allowing water to fill the boat. Still... it made it this long.

[Garett]

Sounds decent enough of a trade, if that's what you want?
Oh yah she'll pull a skier no problem.

I would get the SR surveyed before I made the move over though.
You're probably not getting much gas mileage with the Sea Doo if any.

Do you have enough tow vehicle and space to store it?

[Matt565]

i have a durango with a 5.9L and tow package...is that enough?

Matt

[ReelWork]

Your Durango is enough, but you will know it's there.

BTW, I see that you have what looks to be an older OMC Sterndrive. Speaking from experience, you can and probably will have some difficulty in obtaining parts for it. Overall the boat looks to be in very good condition. Be sure to check the drive knuckles. They have an exposed metal fingered gearing which was OMC's solution to not using U-Joints. While they are quite good, they are notorious for wearing and down and in some cases wearing out. Take the time to raise the outdrive all the way up and look from underneath to the drive knuckles. A little wear is normal, if they are like broken fingertips, then you can count on fixing that right off to bat..

I would personally plan on setting aside a few thousand for an outdrive replacement in the future though.. I had a Volvo 280 outdrive and while it was good, it was very expensive to work on and parts are getting harder and harder to come by for those older outdrives. Another thing, good props may be very difficult to find. Five years ago when I still had mine (Wellcraft V-20 with Volvo) I only found one place that still had stainless props and they were practically made out of gold, at least you would think they were for what they were asking for them (Over $500)!

Oh yeah, those older Sea Rays are excellent and back then, Sea Rays were notorious for being very generious on power. In other words, they were very rarely underpowered. In fact, they normally had more than enough and in some cases they were arguably overpowered. I doubt that will be the case here, but even with a 220, it ought to scoot!

You mentioned that the engine was supposedly rebuilt this year. It sure doesn't look like it! Maybe the carb was rebuilt, but the motor sure doesn't look like it and if it was, they obviously didn't spend the time to do it right and make it look nice. Make sure to do a compression test. If that has a 2 barrel on it, you can bump up the HP to around 250 by adding a 4 barrel carb and intake.

Good luck! I too started my days skiing behind an older Sea Ray just like that with the old classic yellow hull..