A new restoration thread, of course.

Its a sponge already -

^ Ha, just wait till the next big rain storm and claim it! I get nervous when there was more than a drop of water in the bilge, never mind up to my oil pan. Personally I would call the season a wash, yank her out, and get her fixed properly. When boats break in the water, you dont have the luxury to pull over and wait for AAA safely on the side of the road. When you have a known weak point in the boat and subsequently a now known side effect that is more than likely part of that known weak point, why keep tempting fate. I would definitely not put my family in that situation. Not knocking ya, just my .02. The country and even our little sarcastic community has had enough loss and crap for the year. Don't need to read about someones transom giving way at speed and causing injury or worse.

Did you turn the auto bilge on???
I know on my 1997 32 I have one switch for manual pump and one for auto pump.

scott check replace bellows boots , water pump impellers , lets keep this positive

Yes. this boat also has manual and auto switches, auto was on. Had a nice gentle ride yesterday. Bilge has now been dry a couple days, including a period of overnight storms. I don't think the bilge pumps are coming on anymore than once every few hours, but I now have A&B batteries daisy chained to another 2 batteries (so I have 4 batteries in total for the pumps in the event they do need to run long).

I have water pump impellers on their way, those will be replaced as soon as they arrive. Is there a way to check the bellows boot beyond visual inspection? is there a way to do this while the boat is in the water?.....I'm off to research this next.

I'm not aware of how you check the bellows apart from dropping the boat in the water, trim it up and look in the bilge and see if water is coming in. It would come in trimmed up or down but up the would be extended and presumably leak worse.

pressurize the engine compartment and look for bubbles