I went out for a ride with my then 3 year old daughter in my 22 Donzi. She was tired and fussy but wouldn't fall asleep in the house and the boat was a sure fire way to get her to sleep. 10 minutes into the ride I notice I am low on fuel, but it was all good because she had just fallen asleep. No big deal, take her home, ever so carefully remove her from the passenger seat and fish her out of the boat to lay her down for a nap. Decide to head back out and refuel while she was napping. All of a sudden the boat won't start. Thinking the gas gauge was wrong I go to the gas station and get 10 gallons and dump it in. Still no start. Take the flame arrestor off and find plenty of gas. Check for spark and find none. Fiddle around for an hour in the hot sun trying to find out why until I look at the dash and notice the safety tether is gone. Can't find it anywhere in the boat. Now fully frustrated I storm into the house walk in my daughters bedroom and find that I managed to hook the tether on her life jacket lifting her out of the seat. Of course I am in a bad mood so I sound like a bull in a china shop coming through the house and I wake her up from her nap. No boat ride for me, wife is pissed I woke the kid up early, and I am covered in crap from hanging out in the bilge of the boat.

Awesome !!!

x2

that reminds me of an incident I had once - Mother-in-Law and 4 of her friends packed in the boat going to lunch. We're about 2 miles from my house when the boat shuts off. Both engines ALMOST simultaneously. We floated for about 20 minutes before I finally figured out that my 2 year old had taken it upon himself to turn the fuel pump switches off - I guess there is enough gas in the floats to get about 2 miles from shore......

That is fvckin classic!

I must start out by saying I understand the there is no such thing as "true BOLT ON upgrade", or the one odd ball vehicle "that doesnt exist, and hearing tech support saying "Wow we've never seen that before", im used to things never going right, so i find ways around it. So i bought CMI etop direct replacement headers for my old fountain, go figure nothing fit proper, needed to raise tails, silent choice, modify alternator brackets,cooling lines, oil filter, oil cooler lines etc.

Man it was a fight, halfway through the install I am getting some "professional tech support" from one of the big marine performance warehouses (keeping their identity quiet as they were very helpful through the ordeal) to obtain some other parts to work around my fitment issues. He laughs at me out loud on the phone, "Sorry to say but did you think that the company you got them from sent the wrong headers?"

"$hit I wish I would have thought of that before I attacked the back of my fountain with a sawzall to raise my tips 2"!"

He said "You did what! that took balls" laughing hysterically!

I told him "Yeah it took a few beers!, first beer deciding to do it or not, 2nd/3rd beer layout, 4th beer, "god I cant do this, this isnt right", went back in the garage chocked down 2 more beers, grabbed the sawzall "fawk it pussies dont make heros!" and went for it!


I finally get everything thing on and ready to get wet. I can get enough water through to keep them cool. No prob, redo seapump. Then I burn up impeller on start up. Fawk, it install new hardin stainless pump, WOOHOO good ta go. One header is still too hot to touch, just on the elbow. Redo oil cooler, same thing. I notice the water spray coming out of that tailpipe is different than the other 3.

Now at this point I have become on a first name basis with dave at cmi, and I've run out of ideas. He came over and checked the boat over, yup we have a water flow issue, very possiable a defective header. We decide to pull my silent choice diverter to look up the back of the header, and what do I find..... dumbass of the year award goes to .......Me... one of the tshirts I stuffed up the header to keep dust/birds/squirrels /etc out of the header while I did the install, wrapped up in the silent choice diverter, restricting water flow through the header, giving a real odd spray out the tail.

Morel of the story, dont be a dumbass, assume it is possiabe to get the wrong parts, or have the one odd ball that doesnt exist or fit the "direct bolt on spec".

Thanks to dave at cmi, alan at shogrens, and the folks at keith eickert for all the help in my many "oops"

Well in 1990 bought a brand new Chris Craft with anOMC Ford 302, i know many of you are laughing all ready. So after a two years i thought it to quiet so with some help of my friends we put new exhaust on quick and quite. That worked fine for a year, then i decided how about a new cam, intake and carb. now this was before internet so we ordered all the parts and got it running in the driveway i did hear a little ticking my buddy said give it time. While all this is going on my wife is pregnet we just sold one house and moving into another so things were a little crazy. Well it ran in the driveway so we headed to the ramp and and see how we did, started it up and sound great. We pulled away from the dock and couldn't get on plane so we idled for a bit and tried again, and that was it just heard a pop and it died open the hatch check the oil and its filled with water. This is not a good way to start the summer with a blown engine. Two weeks later we had a new engine put in. Next time make sure you buy a cam make sure its the right one.

Yes i have also forgot to put the plug in,to bad it was early spring jumping in the water to install was not fun.

When you buy a used boat, just don't run it in the driveway get it in the water, another long story.

Replaced intake manifolds, old ones were fine but known to be not so good. Ordered new, showed up a couple days before we had a poker run planned. Figured no problem, quick and easy swap the day before. Got them swapped out, everything back together and timing reset. Fire up to check everything, will barely run, popping like mad etc. Recheck timing, ignition, carbs, wiring etc same deal. Now frustrated, perfect running engines before, now will not run after simple intake swap. Bring a friend over who has more engine skills, checks everything, same result. Now late night before poker run, seriously pissed and no ideas, head to bed. As I'm laying there stewing it comes to me that there were two brass plugs sitting on the bench........that I had ordered to plug to vacuum ports on the intakes. Forgot to put in and were hidden under carbs etc did not notice. Was trying for half a day to run engines with no vacuum signal, 1/2" hole wide open under carb. Put plugs in next morning and ran perfect, made poker run. I think those hours were some of the most stressful I can remember.

I think I might have you all beat.

A few years back I decided to restore a 19ft bowrider I/O Checkmate that I had owned at least 15 yrs. Over the winter and part of Summer, motor out, rebuild leg, new interior/paint go through the boat from one end to the other. When done the boat looks great and I think it's ready so I take it to a local lake for test. (I had it on the hose at home and everything was working well). It was a Summer Friday and I had confidence in my work so naturally the Family came along. We head out, get a mile or so out with mother in law on board when the motor dies. It acted like it ran out of gas but I always store the boat with the tank full and that is what the gauge reads.

After spending 1/2hr or more looking for the problem I remember I emptied the tank in case it had to come out and when I reconnected the gauge and it read MT the first time, I figured it had to be wrong(cause I always store it full) and switched the wires to read full. Now I have to admit to everyone in the boat my mistake and that we are out of gas, on top of it I usually carry a spare 2 gallons strapped in the hold, but not this time.

We got towed in by a "Blow boat".

I win!!

Running out of fuel, for whatever reason, is a little embarrassing.

Getting towed in by a blow boat is seriously degrading. I'd rather drift out to sea.....

RR