One pet peeve with Grady is their crowded and inaccessible stern bilge area. I owned a 305 Express with a generator and water tank in the aft bilge. I don’t know your configuration but I would have had to remove the generator and water tank to access the bilge pump. Luckily I never had to do the...
My 235 wiring was reasonably organized but not picture worthy. I did all my rigging so I cleaned up the wiring as I installed the electronics. I added one additional fuse block so the wiring wasn’t so crowded onto the factory one. I moved both to the back of my hinged panel shown in the photo. I...
Simple to upgrade and adds some nice map features. I caught it on sale for $149 I think. Only minor drag is that you have to keep the microSD card inserted in one unit. This allows it to potentially get stolen.
You should be far more concerned about thru-hull penetrations and related hoses. Look at things that you can't see standing on the deck. I would get a survey done and go with surveyor's report for condition and price. I owned a 2007 Express and it was a solid boat.
I owned a 305 Express and I found it to be somewhat bow heavy due to the cabin. Not a lot but enough to make it bow steer over wakes and waves. Having said that I would have never thought about spending stupid money on a sea-keeper.
I have the same boat as you. Every time I ask the dealer about an issue with the vinyl or hull they always offer to fix it for free instead of making a claim on the ceramic coating warranty.
Depends 100% on the installation. My 2022 Grady was done at a boat dealership and they did a really crappy job. They also said they were going to coat "the hull". As it turns out, they only did the sides down to the waterline. I can't tell any benefit whatsoever from the ceramic coating. My boat...
My 2007 305 Express had slightly higher moisture in the transom when I had it surveyed. Seems like it was about 1/3 higher than surrounding areas. I decided to just leave it alone.
In your case I think I would use heat to dry the wood and then test it with the hammer test for integrity. It...
By definition, the thru hull valves are located within a few inches of the bottom of the hull. So look in any access ports in the cockpit of the boat.
The reason to not run with them open all the time is to not sink if a hose breaks while underway or sitting at a dock.
Boat manufacturers use hoses that are NMMA and/or ABYC approved. It is your boat and you can replace with whatever you see fit. However, if you sell it, a surveyor may flag the drain hoses if not approved for below water line.
I hate drilling holes in my boat so I mounted a 120 volt inlet in the inspect plate by the rear seat on the port side. Works great and reachable from outside the boat.
The problem is the stereo memory power draw on battery #1. I installed a switch in the battery switch panel to turn off the stereo memory when I’m gonna store the boat more than a week. The Grady solution is not very desirable because the stereo memory is permanently disabled.
I would make the dealer replace all hoses in the hull for that price. Thru-hull fittings and below waterline hoses are one of the most common causes of old boats sinking. Don’t plan on doing it yourself. In most Gradys it’s a b***h to do.
This seat basically slides on the cockpit floor with no rails. I’d be surprised if it would be compatible with SeaDek. You might be able to put SeaDek up under it a few inches so it would slide on the SeaDek without having to jump up onto it.