Hey everyone, as the title says I just bought my first boat and so far I love it! I had heard formulaboatforum.com was a good place to ask questions but the place seems like a ghost town. I only stumbled across this place while researching on a handful of minor issues with my boat.

I guess I might as well hit the ground running here, I have a handful of questions that I'm hoping I can get answered by some people here.

My boat:
1999 Formula 330 Sun Sport that has been well maintained
Twin 7.4 L MPI BRAVO GEN VI - L29 (375hrs on engines)
Twin Bravo III outdrives
No genset, no microwave
As a side note, I would be happy to hear if I paid a good price for this - $30k (Northern Virginia)

So far my updates to the boat have been minor but I think this thing is worth cleaning up. Here are the things I have changed so far:

Interior and exterior lighting replaced with LED lights. New lights used plastic instead of metal, it remains to be seen whether that was a bad idea.

Stereo: (on order) Clarion M502, Clarion CMQ6930R 6x9" Marine speakers (the outside speakers sound awful).

All new gages from Teleflex and new 3M wrap to redo the dash plates.

And a handful of minor repairs.

Questions:

Is there any place that I can order the microwave compartment door to replace the regular door I have in that spot to keep the OEM look?

Has anyone ever added a radar arch to this boat, if so, where did you get it, how much, and is it OEM?

My boat came without the cabin key, the seller said he never had it either. I would really like to just replace the lock, is this possible? Where could I find the lock/handle piece?

Now for some difficult questions:

Is there any way to modify my engines to use DTS, or would that require completely replacing them? I'm not asking whether this is feasible or cost effective, I just want to know if it's possible to do simply by replacing parts.

Is there a way to add an either NMEA2000 or smartcraft to my boat in order to have a simple/reliable communications bus?

I'm sure I have some more questions I'm not thinking of, lol...

Thanks guys!

Welcome this is a great place for help or what ever you might need, you might even become addicted like so many have.

Welcome to OSO. First boat?

I believe that Southco makes the latches for much of the boat including the cabin door.

http://www.southco.com/product/class.aspx?cid=7411

Congrats. Lucky for you Formula has one of the best customer service reputations in the business.

Stereo, lights, gauges are all personal preference items. I kow guys with $15K in stereo systems and it's not good enough.

Contact Formula (thunderbird products) with your serial number and they can help you with a cabin key, microwave/door (if still made), and what a radar arch will cost (you could probably buy a nice used car for what that arch is going to cost though.)

As for modifying the engines.........it's not worth the effort if it's even possible. If you wanted all the "new" stuff you should buy a NEW boat. That's why you spent $30K instead of $300K

Thanks for the info, I'll give them a call today.

I know several of the things I listed would be quite expensive, but it seems like this boat could be cleaned up, modernized, and have a few options added that would both make it more pleasent for me to use as well as more valuable. I would think that if I could list it as a DTS+Smartcraft boat, I could get closer to $50k out of it when I went to sell it. Perhaps this is a pipe-dream, very rarely do you get out of something what you put into it in upgrades. That also assumes of course that I could get all that done for under $20k...

I have a serious background in computers (primarily x86 though) and a fair amount of electronics understanding, so stuff like this would be just as fun to do as it would be rewarding for me.

PhantomChaos: Thanks for the tip, Ill try them after thunderbird.

Scott Smith at Formula is the go to guy for parts and infomation for your boat. Any mercury engine with serial number om300000 or higher can use smart craft. Upgrades would be expensive. There is no way to convert a mechanical linkage engine to DTS, and mercury does not offer a conversion kit. Parts would be outrageously expensive to try this convert by yourself.

Thanks, unfortunately my engines are 0L3xxxxx :-( I had already figured that part out though, I was thinking more along the lines of repowering the boat with a pair of 6.2L engines, they're listed on Ebay for around $6k fully dressed.

Key here is that while upgrades may make it more pleasant for you, absolutely nothing you do or throw at it (other than fresh O-hour engines and drives) will make this boat "more valuable" for resale. It's likely worth less now than you paid for it yesterday, and that's just boating.

That being said, welcome to the Formula club!

You answered your own question above.....after all that work it will still only be worth what you bought it for (or less)

So, I took your guys suggestions and called Formula, here are the results:

Good news - They can get me a replacement key for the lock, I just have to get the code that's on the handle for them. Total cost is $9.59/key.

Bad news - They dont have the microwave panel to replace the door in white, but after talking to Scott about this, I'm pretty certain that I can just use my skill saw and router to mod the current door.

news - They do have the radar arch, it fits all Formula 330 SS boats. Total cost of the arch and mounting hardware come sto $8,500, which is roughly double what I would have considered a crazy price. The kicker? I would have to replace my windshield with the newer style windshield that has cutouts for the arch... at a cost of $45,000 (not a typo). He said they may be able to work something out on that price but I should expect a cost of roughly $25k!