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Used Boat Buying Tips, Advice, Check List

In this video Paul and I head out to look at a second hand boat he is thinking of buying. It focuses on the things to check on the outboard and the hull as well as the on water test. It also talks a bit about things to think of when choosing the boat you want to buy.

Used Boat Buying Tips, Advice, Check List – Video Transcript

Hey there, what's left of Dangar Stu here. Today's video is about buying a secondhand boat and is proudly sponsored by Marineengine.com.

As many of you will know from Facebook and Instagram I've been a little bit crook at the moment so I've decided to pull out some old footage from when Paul bought his current boat. Although this video is predominantly going to focus on checking a secondhand boat you're thinking about buying, but first it really is thinking about the type of boat you actually need. There's no point buying a boat or even looking at a boat if it's not fit for the purpose. Where I live on the island we mostly use boats just for commuting to and from the mainland. But obviously fishing is a big activity for most people, waterskiing, just pleasure boating, going to beaches that kind of thing. So make sure you've got a clear idea what you want to use the boat for first, then have a think about how many people are likely to go. Is it just you, you and your mate, the whole family, that kind of thing? How old are the people, are there people in their 70s and 80s, are there young children, infants, that kind of thing? All these things that kind of influence your decision about the boat go for.

Paul had obviously found an ad for a boat he felt was right for him and we picked this video up where we start heading up the coast to go and take a look at it. So I'm here with Paul, and we're heading up the coast to have a look at a boat that Paul saw online. Now Paul being the organized guy he is he's actually made a bit of a checklist. Now in this video we're going to be going through the things on that checklist but I do think it's actually a really great idea to bring it with you just so you don't forget anything. I'll put a list similar to this checklist in the descriptions video so you have something you can cut and paste and print out for yourself. The seller's okay with us checking it over. That's a good point, actually confirming with the seller before that you can check it over. So you want to find one that you like, make sure the price is in the ballpark, and then quiz the owner about the types of tests he's going to let you do when you get there, so he doesn't just say "guy look if you want you want it, if not go away".

The other pre-arrival thing is the tools, so you brought a compression tester, got to get the spark plugs out, so spark plug tools, just some general screwdrivers and bits and pieces. I also brought a two way radio because the boat is fitted with a two way radio, so you can have a chat to see if it works. And you could be looking at the steering and saying turn to port. I notice you printed up a bit of a receipt which looks like it's a really good tip as well. I used a similar thing for the last car I bought. It's just a bit of a format to remind you what details you need from the seller and it looks a bit more professional, and an extra copy for the owner. So here we are, the owner Wayne-really love the guy, more than happy for us to go and have a look over the whole boat.

So we're just gonna start with a bit of a hull inspection. I've got to say so far it looks immaculate, there's no obvious signs of any sort of the electrolysis, pitting, anything like that, it doesn't look like it's been beached much if ever either. There is some corrosion, just sort of everywhere it's not a massive issue. I think it's quite common. Accessories is an interesting thing, with the price you kind of go okay here's the hull, but I've got a fish finder, I've got a radio which has some value provided you actually want them. Subfloor fuel tanks not a really interesting one. There's a water separating fuel filter installed in this boat which is good for the health of the motor. but also means we can take a look at that and check out if there's any water in there. Oh she's pretty nicely installed.

Yeah be more worried about any sort of obvious pitting than any like an oxide layer. That's just what aluminum does. Yeah when you look inside your hull just have a look where the ribs join, that's where you're gonna have any cracks if the hulls been flexing or anything. In this case they look fine. So pitting as corrosion for the actual plate aluminum and cracks on the welds for the ribs, particularly for the ribs you're checking where they attach to the chine here and where they attach to the keel. In this case it looks pretty good. So far hull checks out pretty good, no obvious sign of impact, damage and no sign of corrosion beyond what you'd expect from a boat of this vintage, about ten - thirteen years old. Now vaguely related to our hull corrosion issues or inspections anyway is the anodes on the outboard itself are in place and very healthy. One little knock here on the starboard side but it's nothing to lose any sleep over.

Also when you're buying a boat - motor combination check the builders plate on the hull to make sure the outboard is well suited to the hull, isn't outside this maximum horsepower rating. In this case the hulls rating is maximum one hundred horsepower and it's got a ninety so they're perfect for each other. Very cool little Briggs and Stratton winch. When you're looking over the hull another thing to have a close look at is the trailer itself. They can be quite expensive to replace if it's got any serious issues with it. Trailer checks out pretty well, a little bit of rust on some of the rollers, missing a stud on one of the wheels but they're all things that are fixable. From a corrosion point of view the other thing I always really look at is these steering yokes. This one's actually pretty good but I've seen them completely rusted out. I think it's one of the only parts of these out boards that tends to be mild steel, not stainless or aluminum.

Hull checked out pretty well so we're going to start looking at the outboard. Paul is just gonna whip the cowling off now and we'll just start having a bit of a visual inspection again, and then we'll do a compression test on it. So the motor itself looks pretty tidy, no corrosion on it at all. A few things I'd be looking for is any real sort of salt leak, any sort of signs of some of these head gaskets failing and they look pretty clean. There's no corrosion around these spark plugs either which is nice, particularly these lower ones tend to get pretty bad. Just gonna run a little bit of water through it now and start doing a compression test. I've got this tester hooked up to cylinder number one, and then we'll crank it over and see what we get. So just pull the lanyard out before you crank it and just lift the fast-idle up. Go for it, yeah 120, yep. Now that it has passed this compression test we're just going to get the water back on and fire it up for a bit.

Now we're just going to run through the electronics a little bit. So I'll just do a walk around and see what we see. Once we'd finished all these visual and mechanical checks we took the boat out for an on water test. I didn't actually film that test at the time but I'll go through now some of the things to look for. Before we do that though there's a couple other things worth mentioning, one I guess is that if it's a four-stroke I would also take a look at the oil in the four-stroke. So even just take the dipstick out make sure the oil is not low it's not burning oil or it hasn't been run low and also that there's no water in the oil. It's a really quick and easy check you can do that's well worth doing. I would also quiz the owner about the History, it sort of seems obvious but it's easy to forget sometimes. They could often clue you in to things, even things like the boats been sitting for a few years so you know the fuel in the tank is gonna be old, that kind of thing. Particularly if the boats got an in-floor tank so it's worth asking those kind of questions

Also as you could see earlier this trailer was missing one of the wheel studs which we replaced, just picked one up from an auto parts store and popped that in. But it's also worth doing things like jacking it up and feeling the trailer wheel bearings. The last thing you want to do is hook the boat up you've just bought to your car and then find out that one of the wheels falls off on the way down the freeway or whatever. So well worth making sure the boats kind of good to go before you do the on water test. Both good to drive on the trailer and good to run with the fuel that's in it etc. The boat we're in today actually isn't the boat Paul bought, so a different boat, but it's very similar in size and shape. Actually think the hull might be identical now I think about it, but this has a Mercury four-stroke instead of a Yamaha two-stroke.

Obviously you will have gone through the process of launching the boat if it's a trailer boat and that'll give you some sense of how user-friendly the trailer is and the winch and all that kind of setup. But in this case we're already on the water. Now one of the first things I'd look at with a boat is just how stable it is. You might have a vision of being in a boat and fishing and a few of you walking around. But if I get up on this boat it's quite a large boat five meters so it's pretty comfortable. With this boat for example I can sit right on the gunnel like this, sitting right on the edge it hardly moves. It's quite beamy, it's quite long, and that might be how you pictured your life in the boat.

Being quite stable like this, suddenly you're getting in a boat with a bit of a deeper V and narrower beam and you might be quite surprised at how tender it is, how much the boat rolls as people move around. And so it's really worth getting a sense of that before you commit. One of the other things you can do when you put a boat in the water particularly if it was dry on the trailer is see if any water's coming into the bilge. You might have to lift a floorboard like this have a look under into the bilge. Given the hull looked nice on the trailer I wouldn't consider a leak, water coming in catastrophic. You know it's one of those things where you might use as a bargaining point, but it's unlikely to be something that can't be repaired. It might be a leaking bung, it could be a small pinhole, but there wasn't signs of electrolysis through the hull and that's the kind of thing that you really can't repair very well. So just see if there's water, see if we can figure out where it's coming in from and then sort of make a decision whether it's a real problem or just something that can be fixed with a bit of Sikaflex.

So when you go to start the boat there's a few things you'll know straight away, is it easy to start? You know we started on the trailer but how does it start in the water when there's back pressure on the exhaust? So it doesn't start easily particular when it's cold, is the idle steady and is it a good sort of you know eight hundred thousand rpm whatever? Bear in mind if you've got the choke on or it's got a cold start it may start hi till it is warm and then drop down. Then as you accelerate does it accelerate smoothly, does it sort of bog down, feel like it's starving for fuel, that kind of thing? And then when you're up to full throttle is it running at about five, five and a half thousand rpm? If it's not then there's a few things that could be wrong. It could be that it's just not powerful enough for the hull, the hull might be dirty. In this case with river boats, they often get barnacles which will slow a boat down a lot.

It could be that the motor itself is down on power, that it was originally powerful enough to push the hull but now it's you know lost compression or something like that so just see whether you get to that sort of sweet spot of about five, five-and-a-half thousand. Generally whatever close to the redline is for the motor you're buying. So what I'll do is I'll start this boat up now and we'll go for a bit of a run. And what you're looking at once you're on the water is how does the boat sit? Does it just sit bow up, is it out of Balance, does it porpoise, does the front of the boat sort of bounce around? Play with the trim if it has electric trim so you can see whether that gives you the result you're after. I mean it may just be well out of trim so don't write the whole off straightaway. But not all boats ride as nicely as you'd hope so we've done our static test of walking around side to side front to back just seeing how stable the boat is.

Now we're going to see how it rides under Power, I should expect with an almost near new motor, it started nicely, idles well it's an EFI four-stroke so it's a really nice idling motor. Good tell-tale, quite what you expect with this boat, but with an older motor obviously going to get a different result. All right so we'll accelerate from here, we're now doing about 1,500 rpm. [Music] This is a 5 meter boat and a 90 horsepower mercury and pulled out of the water nicely, a little bit of bow up as you take off but that's pretty normal. Then settle about 5,000 rpm until I trimmed it up a little bit which got us to our five and a half without any sort of ventilation and also got the bow up a little bit. It ran quite nicely.

So as far as an on water test goes, you'd have to say this hull passed with flying colors. If it's struggling, digging the stern in, porpoising, whatever, I don't know, it's pretty uncomfortable to live with a boat that doesn't behave nicely so I'd really think hard about whether this boat is sort of going to suit you if it does have some of those characteristics. Look if you're just looking to get out and have a little bit of a fish, you're going to be sitting at anchor, or drifting and fishing, you're not going too far and the price is right, maybe but just think hard about whether you can live with those handling characteristics for the life of the boat. You might find you can redistribute the weight a little bit but other than buying a whole new outboard for it you know you're kind of stuck with it. Sometimes though the outboards pretty clapped out and it's essentially free, really what you're buying is the hull and that's a different story again. So just be sure what you're getting into. Alright once you've decided that you want the boat then Paul had prepared a special receipt, so what you're looking at doing there is just getting a full receipt to make sure you actually own the boat once you've bought it and that can involve things like doing a check.

You want to make sure that there's no money owed on the boat and you want to make sure the boats not stolen and there are online government sites and things. I'll try and find a link and put it on the description of the video for checking those things before you commit to buying and handing your money over. When Paul bought this boat he went down the road and got a bank check where I think it's a good way to go. It's a little bit safer I think than handing cash over but the person selling the boat doesn't have any risks the checks going to bounce. Well thanks for watching, I hope this video helps you if you are thinking about buying a secondhand boat soon, give you an idea of some of the things you should look for and some of the things you should check. There's bound to be other things you should check that I've forgotten about so feel free to comment in the description below and I'll catch you next week