Way2slow

I've never owned one or been in one but based on my general boat knowledge, I don't you are going to be happy with the performance. Tracker is notorious for under power boats so the can make the selling price look more attractive. I would almost bet it has a hydrofoil on the motor to help it get on plane. With just one 200lb person in it, it might seem ok, but with a couple 200lb and the live well full, I have a feeling it going to struggle. You definitely would want to take it for a test ride. I tried to do a search on what that boat is rated for, and I guess they keep that a secret, but they claim a 50 is all that's recommend by tracker and bass pro shops. It's sold as an entry level boat so they want to keep the price down as much as possible. So maybe I'm all wet, but don't think so. Like I said, definitely take it for a test ride. Also, as mentioned above we are coming to the end of the boating season, and between now and Christmas you will probably start seeing a number of deals showing up. People get to looking at that payment out there doing nothing and thinking how they are going to pay for Christmas. That boat is usually there first thought. Also, you have to consider what you have to tow it with. The bigger the boat, the bigger the tow vehicle needed.

You best bet is to try and find someone that's as knowledgeable about them as I am and have them go with you. There are so many things you need to know and what to look for, it's going to be difficult without a good knowledge base. Age has a lot to do with but there are 20 year old boats out there in better condition overall than some three year old boats. Make and condition of the motor is a major concern when dealing for one and you can't tell that by just looking at it. Years back, a dealer had a 20' Sprint boat with no motor I was looking at buying. He said the guy upgraded to a Stratos and put his motor on it. After checking, he didn't just upgrade, the transom on that Sprint was totally junk and it was cheaper for him to trade it than repair it. However, the dealer was not saying anything about that.

I Don't have to worry about that. Being retired military and on social security with medicare, my medications cost me less than $40 a month. It's only that much because of one I take the copay is $36 every two months, but not complaining about that because a two-month prescription for it over the counter is $12,000 (that's not a typo). Add to the fact I have to go to a rheumatologist every 90 days and have blood work done each time, that could all get very expensive but cost me nothing. The other few I take are $12 each for 90-day refill

Catt, at least you get to use yours and keep it clean. Mine hasn't been off the trailer in two years, as you can tell from the picture. I used to take the motor off and flip it upside down on the trailer, but both the 9.9 and the 25 seem to have double in weight over the past couple of years, so I quit that. I do take the TM and electronics off and seats out and store them. I run the 25 in the lakes and 9.9 in the rivers and it's a job for this old man to change them these days. Some of the larger creeks and small rivers are so bad for laydowns, I use my 4hp on it for the smaller lower unit and less draft. Done got too old think about using the canoe in them.

I have a hard time with the tiller extension idea. First off, by the time you got it to where you wanted it, you would only have a few degrees of turning capability. I use one of these and just move my seat over. I'm 77 and have very limited movement of my neck and back so twisting around to operate the tiller is not an option for me either. Being able to offset the seat works great though. Please note, the one I've referenced is a 33", I don't think you will be happy with the shorter slides that some have. Also get a pivot base so you can turn the seat. Also note, I am left-handed so I offset mine to the right, you may want to go to the other side if you are right handed. Might notice another handy little thing I did. On the transom under the tiller handle you see a flat bar. That's a slide on bracket held by the spring tension in the steel I made to hold the transducer. Keeps from having to make holes below the water line to mount a bracket and keeps your transducer from getting knocked off. Amazon.com : Wise 8WD73 Sure Mount Seat Bracket Kit, 33", Aluminum : Boat Seating Accessories : Sports & Outdoors

A couple of things I find helpful. Have the trailer connected to the vehicle, that keeps the tongue from lifting when you don't want it to and the trailer rolling off the jack. Break the lugs loose before jacking it up. Placing the jack under the axle is not always that easy but if you can, that usually works best. Placing it under the frame can sometimes cause problems with being able to get it high enough for the tire to clear the ground. With the trailer connected to the vehicle, you can place the jack on the frame in front of the axle and that helps get a little more height. You can't do that if it's not connected to vehicle. I have never tried one, but on small single axle trailer one of those things you put on the axle that uses a cam action to lift the trailer might be handy. Actually, in over 60 years of hauling boats around, I've never had to jack a trailer up that was not in my yard/driveway, and there I usually try to use my roll around hydraulic floor jack. Sometimes that's not always possible because of where the trailer might be sitting, and that jack is heavy and hard to move around off a hard surface.

You have to figure, anyone wanting to steal something like a boat trailer and risk what's it's going to cost them if they got caught, can't overly developed in the brain department anyway. So, if you make it very complicated, they are not going to be able to figure it out or do thousands of dollars' worth of extra damage trying. A few years back, I bought a nice looking Mercedes SLK-230 for $500 scarp price because of how bad someone destroyed the dash trying to steal the radio out of it. A tow truck left it outside a shop (the shop was closed) where he dropped it off to have a no-start problem fixed. Between the cost of what they wanted to repair the no-start problem and the damage they did to the dash (and they still didn't get the radio out), it was twice what the car worth. The owner only had collision insurance, and both the shop and tow truck said they were not responsible.

A little tip, if you clean both sets of the threads with brake cleaner and put some Loctite Primer on them before putting on the Loctite Red, it most likely "AIN'T" coming off without some heat.

Locks mostly just keep the amateur honest. If a professional thief wants it, he usually has a method to get it. A few years ago, a friend got back to the ramp to find his tandem axle Ranger Trail gone. He had what was supposed to be high security locks on his receiver and the hitch, thinking it was safe. They just took the ball off, he welded the ball on after that.

You think you are an old man at "40"! All I can say is you have a hellavalot to learn about really getting to be an "Old Man". I didn't even consider myself getting old until my mid 60's but now my old body is paying me back for the hell I've put it through, "Big Time".

That much slow running, idling and fuel problems you were having, it may be getting a little carbon fouling. I suspect if you pull the plugs out and look at them, they are probably heavily carboned. I would suggest you do what's called a plug dump. You do that by running it at wide open throttle (WOT) for a few miles or about five minutes and then on the way back to the ramp cut the switch off at WOT. You want to avoid letting it idle. That's about the only way you can actually tell how the engine is running. Black plugs after a plug dump show things are not good. Now with that said, be careful doing that. It drops the bow of the boat hard into the water and may want to try doing a hard right turn. Make a couple of tests, first at about half throttle, quickly snatch it too neutral. If it does ok there, do it at 3/4 throttle, and if ok there, do that at full throttle. That will give you an idea of how the boat is going to respond, and if it tries to turn hard, you can quickly give it gas to stop it. You can't do that if you kill the engine. If it does not like you doing that, instead of killing the engine, get off plane as quick as you can safely and then cut it off, so it has minimal time to idle. Then before you run the engine again, pull the plugs and see what color they are. If the fuel/air mixture is right and everything is good, the plugs should be somewhat of a paper bag brown to light brown if it was not let idle. It only takes a short period of idling for a two stroke to blacken the plugs By the way, if someone that has a fairly fast boat that gets up on its pad with good bow lift and flies the hull at WOT, DO NOT TRY ANY OF THIS WITH THE MOTOR TRIMMED OUT, trim the motor down first so the hull is fully plowing the water, and still be very careful or you might get introduced to what is called a bat turn.

I guess it's a little late for this post, you have a lot of time and money invested but I have to say this. I sure hope you did a compression/leak down test on that motor before you started down the road you have been on. It sure would be sickening to learn you have put all the work and money into a motor that's used up. If not, you might want to do one just to see. If I remember right, that was still when they were running 85 to 90 psi with a good, charged battery and spinning at over 250 rpm. Low compression is going to kill hole shot. That's not a problem if it will let you take all the spark plugs out to do it but a lot of times the starter won't let you do that. The Bendix kicks out when it hits the cylinder with the compression gauge in it. If it does that, you have to do it one plug at the time. You also need to do this on a warmed-up engine. Let it run on a hose for at least five to ten minutes, then do the compression test. A cold engine will lie to you big time. I prefer the leak down test but if doing a compression test, I usually let it hit on each cylinder six times. The main indicator is that all cylinders are within 5% of each other, and no more than 10%. For an accurate test, you want the same number of pulses on each cylinder, I've found six to be a good number. I don't see you doing the leak down because the gauge is expensive, you need 100psi air pressure and it's a little harder to do, but if you have to try that, you still don't want more than that same 5% to 10% max. A DIY rebuild on a four cylinder is probably somewhere between $800 and $1,000 at today's prices for gaskets, seals, pistons and rings, and boring and having the block and heads resurfaced. Most of the time, bearings are reusable, other than the lower crank main. This is also something I would not recommend unless you are very familiar with the internal working of that engine. Getting the rod caps back on perfectly is an art without a special tool that holds them in alignment. So, I suspect a DIY rebuild is beyond your abilities and having it done or buying another power head leaves a lot of room to get shafted. A couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine had a good friend of his call me about a V-6 Looper lower unit, and to help him out I sold him an extra one I had (cheap). When the guy picked it up, he was telling me his mechanic that was very good with these things had rebuilt his with new gears and all, and when he picked it up, he noticed he could shake the prop shaft around in it. The guy tells him it would be fine, that was normal. The next day, he goes out and all the gear oil had leaked out in the driveway, so he was hesitant to use it. I'm thinking, and this is a mechanic he thinks really knows a lot about them. RRiiiigghht! I told him to try and shake this one around, if he could, I would give it to him, naturally he couldn't get any movement out of it.

As mentioned, you did something wrong. It was not the meters' fault. You shorted the tip against a negative as you were trying to check a positive or you have the meter in the wrong mode, and it was not fused. If you have a VOM in the current mode and you try to check voltage with it, that's the same that as putting a direct short on it. Been there, done that numbers of times but I only use Fluke meters, and they are fused, and they are dam proud of that fuse because it cost me about $15 every time I do it. Shorting the tip can also get expensive because you shorted the point you was testing and could have easily fried something else. Just melting the tip is mild, do that in a high amperage DC or AC circuit and have it exploded in your face, that will have you changing your underwear. Trust me, with over 60 years of electronics and electrical trouble shooting experience, I've destroyed a one or two of those high dollar Fluke leads I use.

I've had problems with one of the spade connectors on the circuit board cause intermittent problems like that. Every time you would think you had it fixed, somewhere in the next trip, it would stop working again. I finally got tired of screwing with it and cut the spade connecter off soldered the wired directly to the board. Didn't have any more problems with it after that. However, that was also after using a multimeter to isolate the problem. My first knee jerk action was to replace the switch because they are so common to fail, and it didn't feel right when activating it. The switch was probably going bad because of the mussy feel it had instead of a positive click but that didn't fix the problem. It took a little isolating with the multimeter to find the cause and three tries at fixing a spade connector that fit tight and didn't see a problem with. The old wife's tale, third times a charm, that was when I finally just eliminated the sucker completely. The first time, I put a new spade connector on. The second time I resolder the terminal on the board, the third time I cut the connector off and soldered the wire directly to the bottom side of the board.

Recommend you get a VOM multimeter and learn how to use it. I never have been able to see electrons moving through wires just by looking.