Recent content by Doc Stressor

When you are at anchor, the water runs forward from the bilge, and the bow gets pulled down by the rode. The float position in the aft bilge allows a fair amount of water to accumulate before the pump turns on. The forward bilge is quite low because of the shape of the hull. So the water...

These are from a 2008 Seafarer. They are in excellent condition. Shoot me a PM and we can discuss things.

What year is your Seafarer? I may have a set of armrests in good condition that might meet your needs.

That old hull can actually benefit from more weight on the transom. When I ran my old 204C, I had a padded 200 quart cooler that I mounted just in front of the spashwell. When I had passengers sitting back there on the cooler, the boat would ride a lot better in a chop than when they were...

My F250 would foul plugs because it made oil whenever I trolled. The oil level would eventually get high enough in the crankcase that it would go through the breather into the intake manifold. A bad fuel dilution problem like mine can't easily be fixed short of a rebuild. I got rid of my F250...

Any autopilot that interfaces with your NMEA2000 backbone will work, regardless of the manufacturer. I have a Furuno Navpilot 300 on my boat that is independent of my Simrad NSO EVO3. My neighbor has the same Simrad with a Simrad autopilot. Each has its pluses and minuses. The Simrad...

The old ones had a 3V lithium battery that was soldered in place behind the circuit board. It needs to go back to SIMRAD. They only make them to last 5 years or so. I don't know about the NSS, but there needs to be powered internal memory to store any configuration information.

Dielectric grease is silicon-based and contains no petroleum.

Yamaha actually specs 182 minutes of reserve capacity. That is probably overkill, but it will allow you to run the engine for about 3 hr after an alternator failure. It also provides plenty of power for a powerful amplifier system that uses a lot of juice to play music at anchor. If you just...

The best $20 you will ever spend if you maintain your own batteries: Load Tester Unless there is severe battery damage, a freshly charged battery will always show 12.6 or so volts. But what happens when you put it under a load like starting your engine? I've used this Harbor Freight piece of...

I have gone 7 years between replacements using Deka 27M6 flooded cell batteries in my last 3 boats. These are listed as starting batteries but are actually dual-purpose given the 182 minutes of reserve capacity. I leave my fish finder on full-time when I bottom fish and turn on the bait well...

It is mounted on the transom about 6 inches to the right of the pickup. The sonar doesn't get through the bubbles very well. The 2-D sonar and Downview functions are fine since they shoot straight down. The starboard side view functions fine as well. If you mount a through hull transducer...

It certainly will screw up a transducer read. They leave a trail of bubbles at almost any speed. My side imaging transducer is mounted on the transom to the starboard side of a pickup and the port image is distorted to the point of being useless.

After cleaning and before re-bedding, you should re-passivate the stainless steel or the corrosion will come back. Commercial treatment uses nitric acid but that is pretty dangerous. I have had good luck with citric acid. Your best approach would be a commercial product that both removes the...

I got a 6 ft strip from a Grady White dealer 5 years ago and it cost me $76.