Gary P

Chris - Wow, small town, and a small world! I'm from Endicott NY too, and I think I know the previous owner!!! Is it Dave Powell, whom I used to drag race with at the Friday Night Drags at Tioga Motorsports Park? It must be one and the same, and I can tell you that he always had a primo looking drag car, even if I did whoop his butt on the track! .

My brother had a 2000 353 for about 7 years. Twin 500 EFI's, mostly stock, with stand-off boxes and shorties. We ran it in the Buffalo Poker Runs in the Niagara River and Lake Erie, up until 2007 when he went to a Skater 30. We still run the poker runs in the Niagara and Lake Erie, and once a year in Seneca Lake with the ROPA boys poker run.

Any way, I wanted to comment on how great this post is, and that was before I found out the boat was from Dave Powell in Endicott NY. The post has been very informative, and very respectful by all parties involved (even Dave! ) .

badmonkey

Gary,

Thanks for your kind words. Yes the previous owner was Dave Powell (AKA - AXAPOWELL). I can only imagine how Dave's drag car was. Lord knows he's very particular....maybe even anal...lol. I hope to get the chance to meet you in person and listen to all the stories of past days. Also want you and everyone else to see the changes we are making to this boat. She is really going to be a show stopper thanks to Glassdave (Dave Sikorski) whom is doing all the repairs and the new paint job and Dave Leonhardt at XT Innovations who is doing the new interior.....

We have not finalized our coming seasons poker run schedule yet. We hope to come up and run the 1000 Island event in August...still TBD. We will be running the Long Island Stampede in June. As of now that is as close as we will be to you guys. Hopefully we get the chance to have beers soon....


Chris

Gary P

Cool, and you're right, Dave was and probably still is anal... :-) I recall that every vehicle he had was kept in mint condition. His 3rd generation Firebird was one fast car. He plumbed a lot of nitrous through that motor! (And, he still drove it on the street).

Hmmmm, in August, I think the Buffalo and Thousand Island runs might conflict with each other. I'll have to check on that. Would love to see your "new" ride! The Formula is definitely a different style of boating from what we do in the Skater, but it's all fun. I loved the Formula's ride, and the sound of power. The Skater with outboards is totally different. A bit faster, but a different kind of boating.

By the way, we bought both of the Formulas ( first was a 242LS and then the 353 Fastech) from Long Island dealers. My brother and I grew up on LI, and did much of our boating in our younger years in the Great South Bay, and the Jones inlet.

Gary.

Audiofn

Get a room!

badmonkey

Nice John....

Chris

88242LS

Hmmm, I think I know your brother, if its the boat I think it was I was in love with that boat!!!

Gary P

Yep, he keeps the boat up in your area. His F353 looked like brand new when he sold it, and it was 7 or 8 yrs old at the time. That boat was kept on Grand Island, but his Skater is across the river at East Pier Marina.

88242LS

yup, I grew up and have worked at the marina since I was 15

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

climate has nothing to do with it. It is, quite simply, the engine liner apparently does not/did not/ or never was fit properly, I'm also not so sure they had any way of telling during the assembly process either and i think, judging by how the repairs was done it was done on the fly in an as needed basis. Its easy to see the liner was meant to fit flat up against the running surface, being a simple laminated hull without any core (Baltek, Divinycell. etc) it will require some form of secondary support. The repair that was done to your boat and Chris' boat at the factory was clearly an "ad-hoc" fix at best. Not only was it not very well thought out it was poorly implemented. I have to agree with you on not using foam to try and fill the cavity especially if you have some water/sludge in there, I have to revise my earlier comment i made on that while we talked. I think foam filling would have corrected the issue without the presence of the crappy Plexus spoodged in there, if the foam had a clear run throughout and was used as a primary fix it did stand a chance but again it to would have to be carefully done. I tell ya something else Jon I had to develop some all new methods for material removal that Plexus is some wicked sh!t and just melts and laughs at you if you try and grind and there is a TON of it under that liner. I used a combination of a wood carving tool called a King Arthur Lancelot wheel and a simple handheld wood planer (get some ear protection with a bluetooth receiver your gonna be in there a while lol) just keep making easy passes till its gone. Plexus is itself an fantastic bonding material and i doubt there is anything better. The problem was how it was used, it requires much closer tolerances and much more care then was given to these boats during assembly (or at least that part of it). Again i have to reiterate Formula builds a great boat and as i said before Chris's boat is one of the nicest and best thought out production built boat i have ever seen (of that era). Apart from this bilge liner i can find nothing on this boat that could have been done better (in a production environment) and AxaPowells touches really knocked it out of the park (love the cabin and dash).

I am curious to see as this unfolds how many liner boats will turn up that have the two inch plugs in the liner and if there are any that dont. So far we have two . . . .


I gotta go work on some deck renderings . . . .

08 fastech 292

I'm just getting caught up on this thread and I hate to hear of the problems badmonkey and audiofn are having. We all own Formula's for a lot of different reasons, but I'll bet everyone's top 1 or 2 reason in the quality of the boat. Its why I bought another one after running our 271 for 17 years.

My 2008 292 has two of the plugs in the bilge liner, one under each motor. I have always wondered why they were there and assumed they were cut to allow air and excess adhesive to escape when the liner was installed. NOW, I am worried that the same problem could be lurking in my boat as well. It comes out of storage at the end of April, so what do you recommend I do to determine if I have the same separation issues? I guess I'll start with knocking around on the bottom of the hull to see if it sounds solid or hollow?

Dave