Way2slow

By the late 90's I would think most manufactures had changed over to closed cell foam, but weighing the boat is a quick way to check it. Some boats run a drain in the floor right at the seats. If you have that, you may be able to open it and do a core sample, if it doesn't have a piece of PVC drain pipe in it. When they first started using flotation foam, they used open cell foam because it had a higher flotation value, but if water was able to get to it, it would absorb the water and hold it. I had a 89 Stratos 285 PRO that was so saturated, the boat weighed 290 pounds less once I got it out and replaced it with closed cell foam. Replacing the foam is not something the for the not knowing. The cap has to come off, all the old foam dug out and new foam poured in. Pouring too much in can actually bust the hull and rip the floor apart because it swells up to 10 to 1 within several seconds and you only have about eight seconds working time for the time it's mixed to it starts to expand. If you have the batteries in front, get them back in the back. That much bow weight will kill the crap out of bow lift, causing serious wetting of the hull, which as mentioned, kills all chances of making speed.

My Javelin runs best with the prop at 5 to 5 1/2 inches low. I gets the bow up and holds it. If I go any higher it keeps dropping the bow at WOT. Back off the throttle just a touch and the bow hops back up, go back WOT and it drops. Running deeper gives it more leverage and it holds fine. This is also with custom tuned props to give it more bow and stern lift.

Two stroke motors are rather unique. They don't like to be loaded. I'm not even going to try getting into the dynamics. Not sure how much you are into fast cars, but look at NASCAR. They are not decreasing gear ratio much to make them run faster, they are increasing RPM. They usually only. You seemed to be set on thinking a higher pitch prop will be faster so go for it. The prop you are running may have a rolled blade that's not obvious just looking at it so trying a different prop would be a good thing do. I would strongly suggest you find someone that has a known good prop that you could try before forking out the bucks for a new one, and I hope you wouldn't even think about running an aluminum one on that motor. One other thing I might suggest, take everything you can out of the boat and take it and get it weighed. Then subtract the motor, TM and other stuff left in it and see if you are close the factory dry hull weight. The reason for this is to insure you don't have wet floatation foam. You can get the trailers weight by launching the boat and then take the trailer and weigh it.

For what you have, it sounds like you are dead on. Going to a higher pitch thinking it will give you more speed is not the way these things work. A higher pitch prop will load the motor down more and could actually cost you speed. Are you running a jack plate, if so, what size (how much setback)? What's your prop height set at? I've never had any dealings with a Charger boat, but have always heard they ride a little heavy. Now, I'm going to suggest you do some research on line about your boat and what speeds they typically run with 225 - 250hp. The reason for the questions and suggestion is that seems very slow for that size motor. I have a 20ft Javelin that weighs about the same as a 20ft Charger and a 250 will push it in the upper 70s. Understand, with the info you have given, a 22" pitch prop is what you should have, but!! that's sounds like it's compensating for a very bad setup or a motor that's down on power. Might consider doing a compression or leak down test on you motor and look at the plugs to make sure that are all burning the same color after you have made several minutes of WOT and not let it idle for any time. Also, I go back to fist comment in that I have never messed with a Charger and know nothing about them, and what you have may be perfectly normal for that boat, but it's a lead sled if it is.

I've been doing this stuff about 55 years and 450 hours is not that many hours on a properly maintained engine and one that has been run on good gas and oil, newer model engine. I would take that any day of the week over what most call rebuilt. When you start buying rebuilt outboards it's a total crap shoot on what you might get, and don't think for a second the seller is going to be totally honest about it. Like one of the other posters noted, there just not a whole lot of trusty builders, and what some call rebuilt can be anywhere between installing new rings, replacing one blown piston, to boring all cylinders and installing new pistons and rings. A remanufactured engine buy a reputable builder will have almost everything but the rods, crank, block and heads replaced.

yea, and I put four of those identical hubcaps on my daughters Buick. They started cracking and coming off within a year. Bought another set to replace the two that came. That set did the same thing. Within a couple of years, the ones that are left on it, almost all the silver has gone.

I was only joking about welding it. A lot of professional fabricators would laugh if you asked if they would weld it for you. Trying to weld dissimilar aluminum's that are different thicknesses on one of those only being 10 - 12 gauge is not easy and if you didn't repaint it, it would look a poor attempted to camouflage it, touching all the spots up. Plus welding is not necessarily the best unless done by a true professional that knows how to anneal it when done or it could make it brittle and crack over time. Not to mention how wavy it might look on flat panels.

Shoot, just go out and spend about a couple of thousand on a MIG with a spool gun for aluminum or a TIG. Spend another couple thousand on classes learning how to use them to weld light gauge aluminum and start over again next spring. Then you can do your little $500 upgrade the "right" way. Then you would only have to repaint the boat and be done with it. It's amazing with the little DIY upgrades and projects can lead into, ain't it? My daughter drug home a puppy last summer that's now about 70 pounds and destroying the back yard and getting dirt all in the house, (there's a dog door to go in and out as pleases) so I've decided to fence in a area on the side of the house about 35' square. Thinking a couple hundred dollars of fencing and be done. Yea, right! My list of materials just added up to $950 and that does not include railing around the back porch to cut off the path into the back yard and gravel in the path they will take across the back to get to that area.

I confused, which is easy for me with Merc's, but where is that stuff draining from. It looks like it's draining out of the exhaust port at the prop end. Is that where they put the drain plug on those? As for the color and what it's supposed to look like, don't know, never used Quicksilver lube but somewhere I've heard it's blue, so don't know what it looks like when you drain it. That may be totally normal, one of the guys that do regular maintenance of theirs will have to say. I know that doesn't look like anywhere near enough, I would think there should be somewhere around 40 ounces in there.

Yea, when I read the whole post I saw that, but still, he's got to be sure none of those things are anywhere near the water line or below it. I said I would use stainless, because they are much stronger than aluminum, but I would first double check and make sure long term exposure of stainless against aluminum does not create corrosion. I don't mess with tin cans so not sure about using different metals against aluminum. I do know you don't want anything galvanize anywhere near it.

What am I missing here. What I bring up with that link is pop rivets. I would avoid using those in an aluminum boat and if I did, it would only be places well above the water line and on something that didn't have much stress and I could not get an anvil into to brad an aluminum rivet. Also, as mention, even then they should be the proper length, not just one generic length that's going to leave them sticking up everywhere. Those things might be ok for putting a lid hing on or some small accessory but not in the structure. Not trying to be ugly, but it sounds like someone needs to do a whole lot of home work on proper repair of aluminum boats.

Wow, you sure pulled this post out of the grave. Oil in the intake. The oil and gas are mixed internally on the Ficht engine, so any oil you see in the intake is strictly from the blow back through the throttle bodies. All reed valve two strokes have a small amount of blow back, that's why they run a small siphon hose in the bottom of the intake cover to pull it back into the engine, so you might want to look and make sure yours has not come off. If you are seeing gas and oil mixed, sound like it has or the gasket around the air silencer is leaking. There was not a problem with the bolts holding the injectors, the problem with the injectors was the fuel line going into the would leak and catch fire, that was fixed buy the USCG recall/update in 1999. That was not an issue on later production motors after the USCG mandate. I would clean the engine good with some type of cleaner like Spray Nine, blow it off and then look for any small leaks of fuel or oil. Port side and under the throttle body at the lift pump is fuel, starboard side is oil. It should not be leaving an oil/fuel ring in the water. Maybe if it has a plug fouled or something but not a proper running engine.

One word of caution when raising the engine height. Don't get the anti-cav plate much more than in inch above the transom/hull if you don't have a water pressure gauge. You never want your water pressure dropping below 16psi when on plan or making hard turns.

Before messing with the prop, do as suggested. Make sure you setup is right, engine height and trim angle. If it takes a lot of trim up to get it to quit barging through the water, might want to look at increasing setback. Then make sure the motors is doing what it should be. I know you recently rebuilt it, so may be time to do a compression and timing check to make sure after break-in nothing changed. Also make sure the butterflies and carbs or throttle body are going fully open. After all this, then you might want to look at the prop. If it looks like a beaver had part of the blades for lunch, then it's time for rebuild or replacement. The proper pitch should be able to turn within a couple hundred of recommend max with your normal load. If more than 300 below max, then consider going down on pitch. If it's more than 100 over max with normal load, might want to look at going up one pitch. Don't use a light, empty boat unless that's how you run most of the time. Two people, gear, gas, live well full etc, is how you want to check it if that's how you normally fish.

Remington surprised me. I sent them and email about how bad the 5000 rounds of Thunderbolts were. That I've probably shot a box car load of their bullets back in my instinct shooting exhibition days and since and I have never shot anything as bad as these thing were. I asked them if they were being made in China and just boxed by Remington. They had FedEx send me a prepaid shipping label to return the eight, 500 round boxes I had left. I got an email from them this morning that said they were sorry, and didn't know how it happened, but those bullets were so far out of spec, they should have never left the factory. They had bad casings, bad bullets and bad velocities. They were upgrading them the Golden Bullets and shipping me 10 boxes of those for my troubles. I thought that was very good customer support.

Why ruin a perfectly good food by cooking it. I want my oysters right off the bottom or fresh off the boat. No sauces to cover up the flavor, pop em loose, open em up and eat em. Maybe a few saltine crackers with them, but nothing else. As for the beer with them, you can pour that stuff back in the horse. For a good steak, I'm about the same way, just warm it up and throw a little salt and pepper on it. I like to have a very hot bed of coals, in the grill, throw it on for about a minute on each side, just to get a little sear on it. A lot of times I'm cutting off pieces of raw to munch on while cooking. Of course these days, the hardest part about having a good streak, is finding one. That's hard to do these day. Not long ago, I ordered some that were $27 a pound, and could have gone to the Piggy Wiggly and gotten crap I ended up with for $7 a pound. Have never had the nerve to order any of those $50- $75 dollar a pound ones. That's eating a little too high on the hog for me.

Well, got the barrel I ordered for the 10/22 Take Down, put it on and went in the rain just to see how it does. Did nothing but load 10 CCI 40gr Mini-Mags in a magazine and shot all 10 at a 50 yard target, figured the scope would be close enough to get on paper. They hit 2" right and I covered the hole all 10 made with a nickle. Looks like it might be a shooter. In a few days I hope to have time to work with it a little.

It's not all about the viscosity of the lube. It has more to do with the additives in one versus the other and molecular structure of the lube.

It's still in one piece, so you haven't totally ruined it. Unless you run full throttle all the time or make extremely long runs full throttle a lot, I actually doubt you've even harmed it. The High Performance 90W is what you should have been using, but that's in the past now. Get the right stuff, take both plugs out and just let it sit for about a day to give it time to drain all it can out. Then fill it from the bottom, pushing the oil up into the LU until it comes out the top. Put the plug in the top, then take the pump loose from the bottom and put that plug in as quickly as possible. Make sure to put the top plug in first to limit the amount of loss when you disconnect from the bottom. The main concern is the heat those LU units can build under the stress of those big motors and sustained high RPM's. The 80W90 can start to break down and loose most of the protection from metal on metal when it gets extremely hot.

The 92 was the one that got them in trouble with Mercury. When first came out, they were lying big time about the HP, closer to being 200 than 150, and finally had to change them. As was mentioned though, there is a very good chance it may not still be the 92 power head. They had a very serious problem with the block. The early ones had a bad area in the casting where the voltage regulator bolted on that cracked and leaked water into the cylinder, causing it to melt the dome from going lean. When it blew, if the right person that knew what he was doing welded the crack, they seem to hold up pretty good. Once that issue was resolved with them, they were considered almost bullet proof. A guy I know that did a lot of remained engines unit he retired said about 75% of the early eagle blocks (that's the family name for the fast strike block) were cracked but was extremely rare to have one come back after welding it. You would definitely want to see if the power head has ever blown, and verify the SN on it matches the SN on the plate on the engine. There is a round disc about the size of a quarter in top of the block that looks like a freeze plug and has the SN on it. Sometimes they are the silver aluminum but may have been painted the color the block. Then you also have figure, if it is original and has not cracked by now, very good chance it never will.

Too bad you didn't post you were going to do that. I have that Stars and Stripes decal on computer disk that any graphics shop could have printed it for you, for a whole lot less. When OMC went belly up, a friend of mine that work for them got it for me. I say that but it's been so long since I've seen it, I would have to make sure I can still find it. I'm the worlds best magician, if I put my hands on it, it disappears. Wow, I guess I need to recant that being cheaper part. I went to your link, and they have some of the best prices I've seen if those were the full size decals I looked at.

I deleted this, didn't really belong on this post. couldn't figure out how to delete the post.

That's probably just for that time, next time, at another pump, it will be blowing back on you again. Sounds like you have one like mine, the vent goes back into the filler hose just below the opening or that re stricter plate so when you stick the nozzle in, the rubber splash guard restricts the venting, pull the nozzle out some to prevent that, and the gas stream is interfering with it. I've just gotten to where I poke it in, go full blast, let it spit back out a few times, dumping gas on the concrete, and it will finally make the auto cutoff in the nozzle quit tripping and fill the tank. Might want to check the smaller hose going up, that's the vent, and make sure it's not sagging enough that gas can get in it and not drain back into the tank. That will seal the vent off until it pushes that gas out and cause you to have the same problem.

I guess I'm a little more demanding of my pea shooters and this Marlin with it's micro groove barrel darn sure ain't cutting it. I think how it wants to place bullets on a target depends on the time of day, the alignment of the planets and phase of the moon. Low velocity, 40 grain stuff usually shots best in most 22's, this one hates them. Hyper velocity stuff usually is a wast of money in most 22's. this one loves Yellow Jackets and shoots one raged hole groups at 50 yards with them, after it's warmed up for 20 rounds or so. As for breaking it in will make it shoot better, I'm already approaching 2000 rounds through this one just working on getting it to halfway shoot. I've always said buying something cheap can be the most expensive item you can buy. That has really held true with this POS. I bought it to use in the place of my old 552 I use for instinct shooting, and I've about got it good enough to do that. As for reliable accuracy, I just added $300 to my AmEx card ordering a target barrel for my 10/22.

Several people have eluded to going to 24V if you are not already running it. Let me give you TM 101. A 24 volt motor is 25% more efficient than a 12 volt motor, simple because the higher the voltage the less the current draw for the same amount of power, which equates to less heat and heat equates to wasted energy. This also increases the efficiency of the battery. Same thing applies, the less current the battery has to provide, the more efficient it is. First a quick lesson on batteries. The amp hour capacity of most batteries is based on the 20 hour rating. Some true deep cycles will have a five hour rating also, which is much more realistic to how you normally use your TM, however, if it has a cranking amp capacity listed on it, it's not a true deep cycle. The 20 hour rating means it will run something like a 5 watt light bulb for 20 hours, which is probably about a 1/2 amp, before it is at it's fully discharged level. Now, as the power consumption is increased, the amp hour capacity decreases. That's why if you do the math and your battery is a 120 amp hour and your TM draws 40 amps on max, you think you can run for 3 hours on max before your battery is fully discharged, WRONG! When you start drawing 40 amps off the 120 amp hour battery, it becomes closer to a 65 amp hour battery, so your 3 hour run time just got reduced to about half that, and it's going to be getting slower and slower the whole time until it's to the point you can paddle faster. Then you throw in the fact you should never discharge a battery below 20-25% because it damages the battery and greatly shortens the life of it, then your run time is closer to just over 1 hour of running on max. A batteries life is based on cycle count. Each time it's discharged and charged is one cycle. The deeper it's discharged, the lower the number of cycles. If you recharge a battery when it's to 75%, it may give you 500 cycles. Discharge the battery to 50% and it may give you 300 cycles. Discharge a battery to 20% and it may give you 125 cycles. These are all just examples, not facts. The type battery has a huge amount of what their cycle count will be. The Wally World big yellow thing may be 300 and a name brand AGM may be 700. Cheap batteries are cheap for a reason, premium batteries cost a lot more for a reason. Wow, got long winded there. OK, Back the 12 vs 24V. As explained, 24V is more efficient. Now, digital vs the set number of speeds like 1-5. On max, if the TM are rated for the same thrust, both are going to draw the same current and give the same run time. However, as you start running lower setting, the digital is going to become more efficient. So if you are running at 50% thrust, the digital is going to run about 50% longer. If you are just easing along at a slow casting speed, the digital is going to run as much as 75-80% longer. The reason being, the digital is running a pulsed current and is actually turned off about 75-80% of the time where it's not drawing any current. The standard old set speed motor is running and drawing current 100% of the time. So, back to the less the current draw, the longer the run time. For got to mention one key point on battery ratings, look at the Reserve Minutes Capacity. That is how many minutes the battery will run with a 25 amp draw. I say 25, beware and look at the fine print, some batteries will use a 20 amp draw and have seen a few sneak in there with a 15 amp draw just to make their number look better. The reserve minutes will give you a much more realistic number to calculate from than that 20hr amp hour rating.