TOPIC: Boating is illogical. But fun.

Boating is fun. I thought I would share a story about some early experiences, feel free to laugh. At me.

It starts a while ago when I was in my very early twenties, and my brother was a teenager. We have both loved boats since we were little kids, and were often on the lookout for new ways to get out on the water. So when my brother told me he had talked to the shop teacher at the local high school who had a boat they wanted to get rid of, I was all ears. Turns out the boat was donated to the shop class, but as the class was focused on automotive repair and there was little interest in the boat, especially since it was old. Quoted price: $50. Sold!

So we picked it up and brought it home (much to the delight of our parents), and were now the proud owners of a 1959 AristoCraft Seventeen Funliner (though I now suspect it was a 1960). No roof, no windshield. It did however have a motor, which is where the fun begins.

We figured if we wanted to cruise the lakes, our first task was to find out if we could get the motor running. It did not have a control box (or more accurately, it did not have an entire control box, and what it did have was scattered around the floor of the boat). We figured we would deal with that after we found out if the engine would run. Step 1, get this thing off the transom. Well, the clamp bolts that held it on were seized. No problem, a hack-saw blade can fix that! (Yes, I cringe a bit now). A few bent blades and some skinned knuckles later, and the engine is free. It is also now time to gain one of the first of many lessons about the boat. Outboards are heavy. Really heavy. Well, we have to replace the water pump, anyways, so lets take the lower unit off. Its still heavy. Sure, its only a 35 horse Merc (with the Thunderbolt Ignition), but its not light. Fortunately for us, we have a handy sawhorse, made of only finest 2 x 4s available. Onto the sawhorse it goes…

Now it was time to open it up and find out what we were working with and to learn from a second learning opportunity. Outboard engines are a great place for small animals to take up residence. We opened up the cowling, and viola, rodent poop and nesting material. This lesson was was quickly followed by lesson 3. Sometimes the nest is still occupied.

Yes, there was screaming involved, but before you judge, that rodent was filled with malice. And it was very large. With the residents of the engine reluctantly evicted, we figured we would start by washing out the junk in the engine. Get out the hose, and a good spraying should do the job. Now the engine is rodent free and nice and clean!

Once we had better, more rodent free access to the engine, we got lesson number 4. Rodents like wires. Red wires, blue wires, green wires, they did not seem to like the orange wires. Maybe its like orange life-savers, the ones no one eats. We did not have any wiring diagrams, or for that matter, much in the way of engine wiring experience or skill, but hey, all those wires are color coded, we just have to rewire what was previously there, right?

So we rewire, and rewire, and rewire, and sometime later, we have a clean engine with new wiring. Looked cool! Now that it was wired up, it was time to find out if this thing might run! We check that the flywheel turns, and hook up a battery to the starter to find out if it works. It does! Of course, we need a way to start the engine (besides arcing jumper cables to the starter motor). Well, this is where it would have been handy to have the control box with the ignition, and we were still looking for one, but hey, you can get an ignition at the auto parts store for about 7 dollars. And as an added bonus, that only used about a third of our budget!

So, we wire in the ignition, hook up a battery, and bump the key. The starter works! Time for a celebratory dance! Now, to find out if we have spark…

There are several ways to do this, but the simplest is to just check. So we pull a plug and rest it against the block to check for spark while we crank the engine. But of course as soon as we crank the engine, the plugs jump around and loose contact. No problem, I’ll hold them in place while my brother cranks.

On to lesson 5, the voltage from a spark plug hurts. A lot. But, on the up side, we have spark! We can practically feel the wind in our hair and the spray on our face…

Time to add that magic ingredient, gas. So we hook up a gas line, crank her over, and… nothing. No problem, engine has been sitting for a few decades, we’ll just shoot a little gas into the carbs. Or a lot of gas. Crank again and… nothing. Try checking the carbs for blockage, nope, fuel is getting through. Check the spark plugs again, yep, still a spark, and it still hurts. Crank the engine again and… nothing.

So this continues for another day or two, and we start running out of ideas. Then, it occurred to one of us (not sure now which). “You know, when we sprayed water on the engine to clean it, maybe some got in?” So we pull the spark plugs, crank the engine, and shoot about a quart of water across the garage. Hmmm, that might have been a problem. Put the plugs back in, crank it again and… it fires!

Now, at this point, it is worth mentioning again that we have removed the lower unit, because we are trying to figure out how to replace the water pump. So the engine is not being cooled. No problem, we just want to make sure it will run. So we connected a fuel line, and with water no longer hindering combustion, the engine not only starts, it runs! We cheer! (Not that you could hear it over the engine with its now straight exhaust.) We smile! We go to shut the engine down again.

Which presents us with learning moment number 6. Magneto engines, and many two strokes, are shut down by shorting the ignition. A car ignition on the other hand shuts the engine down by disconnecting the ignition. When we turn the (automotive) ignition to off… nothing happens. Or more accurately, things continue to happen, loudly, and the engine keeps running. As an added bonus, the decades of grunge is working is way out of the jets and the engine is now rapidly accelerating. The key will not turn it off, the garage is filling with a blue fog, and we are rapidly going deaf. Now, it would be nice at this point to say that we shared a calm moment in which we expressed our concerns. Something like:

“Dearest brother, it seems to me that we are not able to shut the engine down using the key.”

“Indeed, it does seem like a problem. Shall we pursuit other options?”

“An excellent idea. Shall we run away?”

“Possibly, but it seems to me that we might not be able to get out of the state before this engine explodes, burning the home of our loving parents to the ground.”

“Well, in that case, would you be so kind as to hand me those wire cutters?

So, we start cutting wires. All those new lovely wires. Which brings us to lesson number 7. Cutting all those wires does not shut the engine down. This is followed quickly by lesson 8, a sawhorse made of 2 x 4s might not be adequate to hold a now-screaming two stroke engine. Finally, some level of intelligence slips past the noise and presents itself. Engines need gas to run. So we chase down the engine (which is now walking itself around the garage on the sawhorse), grab the fuel line, and get it free. A few minutes later its much quieter, and only somewhat because we are now temporarily deaf.

Also, did I mention its about 10 o’clock at night? Yes, making friends with the neighbors is one of our specialties.

So to recap:
We filled the engine with water.
Shocked ourselves with the coils and plugs.
Wired in the wrong type of ignition.
Started an engine with no cooling.
Had the engine run away (both in RPMs, and in its attempts to walk to sawhorse away, which I think it was doing out of embarrasement).
Cut all of the new wiring.
Lost some hearing.
Had to get awfully close to a screaming bouncing engine to disconnect the fuel line.

And what is the ultimate lesson we have learned? THE ENGINE RUNS! WE ARE GOING BOATING!

Ultimately we did use the boat, we almost sank it, lost a propeller on Lake Powell, and spent an hour trying to pull start the engine. We ended up giving the boat away.

We still miss it.

Entertainingly written...reminiscent of Peter Egan's Side Glances column in Road and Track.

Some lessons are learned the hard way.

The wise old men in the group will shake their heads, either not admitting they did this in their youth, or understanding that they had someone near them with such experience to spare them their own disaster.

Thanks for sharing.

Great story !
Makes sense to me ! But then again my name ends with a SKI
Reminds me of some of the stuff I did when I was young ?

Figure this one out ?
In my youth… late teens early 20’s I was once the driver of a car being towed, and had a head on collision with the car towing me ?

Now that I got your attention, grab a beer, and some popcorn, because nobody can make this sh..tuff up without it really happening ?

The story:

Being poor post college kids, a roommate buddy and I would buy, with our low budget, and drive any kind of car that would run.
And with these types of cars, we would have the occasional “weekly” tow to get the car back home to fix it.
Due to the constant dragging home of non-running cars, we got really good at towing with a 15 foot chain.
The secret to towing is to always keep the chain tight. This means the car being towed is the brake man, and the tow car never touches the brakes.

This all started with a VW bug. But not your ordinary VW Bug. It was a Fred Flinstone VW Bug. It had a huge hole in the floor pan right under the drivers legs.
YES, I could see the road while driving. As the months of driving this car went on, the hole got bigger and bigger. Fast forward to winter in Buffalo, where I lived.
We all know that the VW Bug was famous for a non-working heater, and you must also add the fact that I had air conditioning, because of the huge hole in the floor.
So I was dressed in full winter garb, and constantly scraping the windshield…. On the inside of the car.
As I drove to work one day right after a night time snow, all this snow would start flying into the car from the huge hole in the floor.
So I looked the figure inside a snow globe as I drove ?
So not only was I bundled up like an Eskimo because of no heat, I was also covered in a ½ “ of snow that came up through the hole in the floor.
Since I worked in a metal fab shop at the time, I found a piece of 1/8 steel plate and I covered most of the hole, so that took care of the snow in my lap problem.
A week later, I’m on my way to work on yet another snowy morning. All of a sudden I hear a clunk. So I think what fell off this car now ?
The car is still running, so proceed to get to work as I used an ice scraper the scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield.
I get out of the car, look under the car, and what do I see ?
The battery hanging on by its cable. The floor had rotted out under the battery, and I drug the battery most of the way to work.
Have you ever seen a cut-away of a battery ? Well that’s what this battery looked like from dragging it.

So here we are with a non-running car again. We tried a different battery, but because of dragging the other battery that was hooked to the starter by the battery cable. The starter wouldn’t even click.
So we get out the 15 foot tow chain yet again. My buddy and I worked at the same place, so we hooked up the VW Bug to the back of his Vega station Wagoon, and we were off for home.
During the day of the tow there was dusting of 2 or 3 inches of snow. Anyway…. The tow home was uneventful till we start coming up to a red light. So I start braking because the light turns yellow
And we were a long way off, and I knew we weren’t make the light. Little did I know he is hitting the gas pedal to blow the light the same time I’m braking. So as I’m sliding from braking he’s dragging me faster on the snow covered road.
I finally figured out he wasn’t going to stop, so I let go of the brake. As soon as I did that, that poor little single rear wheel drive Vega station wagon tire, started spin real fast, and the driver’s side of the car starts fish tailing into
The on coming traffic lane . And of course there is one lone car coming at us about to hit his driver side rear quarter panel. So me being in the car being towed, and still hooked to his car by a chain.
I yank the steering to the far right and make 35 mph right turn on a snowy road. I pulled the rear end of his car out of the path of the on coming car. But by doing that we put so much slack in the chain, that the two of us un-couple.
His car does a 180 on the snow. The VW that I’m in, does a 360. And we have low impact going the same direction head on collision that dented up the fenders of both cars.

But wait ?
That’s not all. Remember that piece of 1/8” plate that I covered the hole in the floor with ? When we hit each other, another piece of floor broke loose, and the front edge of that plate fell though the hole to the road and
Turn it into a scoop shovel. As soon as I was about to go off the right side of the road down 3 foot embankment, that “scoop shovel” hit the snow plow drift, and I ended up with an instant pile of snow up to chin and the car stopped instantly before going down the embankment ! I think the guy that almost hit us got the idea to invented the airbag, when he saw that big pile of white snow come flying up up to my face and I had no injuries ?
After a few minutes of digging myself out of the car, we hooked back up and took off before the cops got there !

OH, to be young again…

I like orange life savers.

Wow. Chuck in Cincinnati, that is a fantastic story! I think with the scraper on the bottom of the car you might have had the beginnings of a budget Zamboni.