Found a Top Gun on a tropical island!
 

I´m currently living in Malaysia and am looking for a fast boat. I have searched everywhere including neighbor countries without success. Power boats are extremely rare here. There are some smaller bow riders and some outboards, that´s it.
By some kind of coincidence I was contacted on FB by a guy who works for the owner and he told me there´s a Cigarette for sale on a nearby island.

First tel contact with the owner was strange because he didn´t know much about the boat and couldn´t tell me the HIN.
Usually you would just walk away and look for for another one, right? Well, this is the only Cigarette around, probably the only in the country and one of only a handful in the whole region.

So I flew over and had a look. The owner got her as part of a business deal and hasn´t used her since. Which explains why he doesn´t know the boat. He is busy with his sailboat and not really interested.
I had a look at the transom which looks like it was sanded and painted over, found traces of the HIN which ends with a 7. Judging by the interior it´s probably a 1987 model.

Actually the missing HIN doesn´t surprise me. Local laws don´t require a serial number and most boats don´t have one. There is no s/n in any official paper, in the registry or insurance forms, nobody cares about it.
Labor is cheap and unskilled here, so the locals probably didn´t worry about some meaningless numbers when they made the transom.

Overall condition is ok, interior still original, one engine rebuilt, both are bored and stroked with Edelbrocks, cant´t say if the transom has rotten plywood. Noticed a strong fuel smell incockpit. I could´t test anything as the batteries were dead. Seller promised to have her ready in the water for a test drive next week. If so, I will go again.
Anyway there is work to do, interior, cockpit and dash needs freshened up, not a fan of the paintjob, the arch has to go and the platform replaced. And there´s the fuel leak.

Asking price is USD32K including the Airberth, no trailer.

Question:
- Is the second HIN location under the port rubrail about five feet forward of the transom? How difficult is it to lift the rubrail to have a look at the HIN?

Photos are coming...

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certainly looks like an 87 Gun to me. there were some subtle differances with the 87 gun dash that did not make it to 88 and later, i can see them in the pics.. Its also a non notched transom, also unique to 87. Price seems fair but i would try to beat it down below thirty. Good luck and hope you find something over there

the first three letters in the hin should be CRT

Interior is not factory, poor boat been wet a lot be careful... I cannot believe how hacked the wiring is... that's gonna need attention and many other things

No notch 87...........is my guess

Sorry, couldn't get passed your avatar. Are all Malaysian like that?

87 was the first year for the Top Gun prior to that it was the 38 Flat Deck. This boat pictured is an 87 TopGun or a very good copy of one. If the secondary HIN still exists it should be under the right (starboard :D) rubrail about a foot from the transom. They were a very thin aluminum stamping and did not last long in salt water. I have seen many remnants but never a full tag, only takes a few screws to excavate the area if you find two screw or rivit holes about five inches apart with nothing in them its gone. Good luck with it.

Heck no, just the opposite! :picard1: When we want to see girls like these we must fly over to Thailand or the Philippines :bananalove:
Besides, I keep telling my wife that I chose this avatar because of the boat.

Great, thanks! I will definitely try it out. And I should ask the seller if I can sand off that area at the transom, but somehow I feel the HIN will not come back.

Correct.

Took me four months to organize the transport from that island to my workshop which I had set up in the meantime.

Things are different here. There are no Mycos, there isn´t any trailer in the whole country big enough for a 38 ft boat. And either is there a pickup truck that could tow it.
So I had to contract a low loader. And a travel lift and a crane. A barge to bring the whole rig over to the mainland. And a crane at the destination, a provisional cradle, a towing truck and a forklift. Including the drivers, operators and helpers a total of 25 men were working that weekend to bring my baby home.

The makers of the floating dock (AirBerth) had strongly advised not to use it as a cradle for the transport of the boat. I did it anyway.
Customs clearance went smoothly, nobody found the ton of spare parts under the berth or noticed that the ugly black “cradle” costs 22k when new.

24 hours later the boat arrived, no damage, nothing missing. Unloading was tricky in the narrow road and the small castors of the provisional steel cradle sank into the hot asphalt (yes, we have over 90 degrees here in January) but at the end we got it inside, finally safe under a roof.

Let the work begin! First I want to check is if the engines turn, fingers crossed. Hope they are not seized.

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That old sail over the arch sure looks ugly
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That was tight

Man, kudos to you for the relentlessness effort on getting this done! Most people would've thrown in the towel with just trying to get it moved let alone refurbished. Looking forward to the updated pics as it comes along. By the way, I really like that maroon color. Classy.

Congratulstions on getting her to the new home. I'm sure you'll have plenty of hiccups working with local constraints but will be worth the effort. Look forward to reading about your progress.

Cheers from nearby. :)

RR

Awesome! Looking forward to following the story of the restoration as it unfolds!

Thanks Tank and rak rua for the encouraging words. Yes, it needs more effort and time here to have a Cigarette but I always wanted one and here we are. Pretty sure a year or more will pass until I can only think of splashing it into the water. Updates on this project will come, but slowly.

Holy persistence!!

Congrats!

Very cool dream come true, looking forward to the updates!

That’s awesome congratulations. Look forward to the progress to come!

What does a "knock off " Top Gun go for, ballpark?

Just in case there is any confusion, the OP's boat is an original Cigarette, not a knock off.
I can't speak for Malaysia but in neighboring Thailand, I know of 2 knock offs built locally. I believe they're well made but the fitout quality is nothing even close to Cigarette.

They were built 10-15 years ago, one has been for sale a couple of times at varying prices. Price comparisons aren't realistic because the cost to import an original Cig is huge and also limited engine options available here. The biggest available engine would be the 8.2 liter @430 HP.

RR

Thats the first Cigarette I've seen with a ski tow hook on the transom

there was one listed on here about 10 years ago. Only one ive ever seen. It was a late 80’s early 90’s model. Good from far, far from good I think is the saying I’d use. Exterior looked nice, the cockpit and such was funky and who knows how the build is. It was like half the going market price at the time.

As Tank said above, "good from far but far from good".
This one was last heard of a couple of years ago in Phuket. It was doing some day charter work and vaguely for sale. Not a 38', I think they called it a 36'....? (Poor photos, sorry)


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I remember that was for sale a year or two ago.

the one I’m talking about looked EXACTLY like a top gun. Until you started really looking at it and all the funky stuff started standing out.

Must be fun @60 mph in 3 ft waves

Thanks rak rua, the HIN says it all...

Checked the engine room out and here is what I found. Both engines are Shafiroff 582 with compression lowered to 9.5, Holley Dominator 4500, Edelbrock aluminium heads, Stainlesse Marine headers, Crane roller cams, MSD Ignition, some Harding parts and Russell and Earl´s plumbing. Nice. Some differences between the two engines though.

Bad news is starboard engine is seized. Found traces of salt(water) in both headers which pi$$ed me of as it´s so unnecessary. Now I have to rebuild a fine low hour engine only because somebody made a mistake and flooded the engine. Pretty sure I know when that happened.
Then again, considering the incredibly messed up und dirty engine room it´s problably best if I pull both engines, fix everything and paint the bilge white. The strainers are probably 33 years old, bilge pumps don´t work and there is only one blower. Leaking hydraulics, no fire extinguisher, messy cabling, dangling hoses and so on.

Before pulling it I want to start port engine, need to hear some music. Will change oil and filter, coil, spark plugs, cleaned and refurbished one carb already, lots of grime and dirt inside.Same with fuel pump.

Did I mention that I got a cero hour Shafiroff 582 short block as a spare with the boat? It´s still on that tiny island though, have to find a way to bring it.


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Port Dominator (removed) is marine type, the other side not, both 1050 cfm.
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Gasket hard as stone
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Only starboard engine has these
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Fuel pump before cleaning

At least you have the skill to do all this. That's what it's gonna take being way out there. Looking forward to the progress.

Engine looks clean inside, hopefully you can get it unstuck

Interesting, good detective work. Reiterating being able to turn a wrench is your saving grace.. Just my $.02, I’d pull both motors and at least psi test the exhaust of the free motor before trying to light it off; unless your going to unhook the water pumps and run it w/out h20 for a quick bit.. Good luck. Watching your progress!
ps, hell of a score on the short blocks!

Nice if they are shafiroff. I’d be leery of the cam in them though, they usually do aggressive drag race stuff. Also surprised it has edelbrock heads. They don’t make very high performing heads. The car guys prefer brodix and others.

Also, that exhaust is likely holding them back. Some also think 582s aren’t good for endurance vs a 565, but that’s hotly debated. Small block Chevy guys are commonly running worse rod/stroke ratios.

I talked to the original former owner once. Nice old fella, but his memory fading, he couldn´t answer all my questions. He bought the engine blocks from Shafiroff and assembled them himself, had the piston domes machined to lower compression and chose a mild cam.
Not sure why anybody would choose a drag engine for a boat, but hey, still happy to have some beefy irons under the hood. They should be 6-7 years old and under 50 hours.
Need some more detective work to identify the Edelbrocks (they have rectangular ports) and the cams. Unfortunately I don´t have any specs on them and either on the ignition timing.

No dyno in this country. I wonder how many hp, any wild guesses?