Advice Requested- Engine surveys

External Since: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 2

Howdy,

We're in the process of purchasing our first boat and we've arrange to
have our boat surveyed this Sunday at Moss Landing in California. We
were also thinking of getting a mechanic or some sort of engine
surveyor specialist to look at the engine also.

Here's the boat:

-----------------------------
1999 Bayliner 2655 Ciera 26' Express Cabin Cruiser, 5.7L Mercruiser
Bravo 3 I/O w/SS Duo Props....250 hours on the engine
------------------------------

Few questions that I'm hoping to more experienced hands here can help
us with:

1. Based on the above description, do you recommend an engine survey?

2. Are there specialized training for folks who do engine surveys?
(e.g., SAMs or NAMs)

3. Should they go out on the water? How long do they typically need a
boat to do the survey?

4. What's a typical dollar range on doing a survey of the above type of
boat?

5. What's some good ways in locating folks who can do engine surveys?

6. Any engine surveyor recommendations for the Moss Landing and/or
Santa Cruz areas?

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

External Since: Dec 11, 2004 Posts: 543

On 16 Mar 2005 14:09:01 -0800, wrote:

>Howdy,
>
>We're in the process of purchasing our first boat and we've arrange to
>have our boat surveyed this Sunday at Moss Landing in California. We
>were also thinking of getting a mechanic or some sort of engine
>surveyor specialist to look at the engine also.
>
>Here's the boat:
>
>-----------------------------
> 1999 Bayliner 2655 Ciera 26' Express Cabin Cruiser, 5.7L Mercruiser
> Bravo 3 I/O w/SS Duo Props....250 hours on the engine
> ------------------------------
>
>Few questions that I'm hoping to more experienced hands here can help
>us with:
>
>1. Based on the above description, do you recommend an engine survey?
>
>2. Are there specialized training for folks who do engine surveys?
>(e.g., SAMs or NAMs)
>
>3. Should they go out on the water? How long do they typically need a
>boat to do the survey?
>
>4. What's a typical dollar range on doing a survey of the above type of
>boat?
>
>5. What's some good ways in locating folks who can do engine surveys?
>
>6. Any engine surveyor recommendations for the Moss Landing and/or
>Santa Cruz areas?
>
>
>Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Up here in the wilds of the North East, surveys run $10 to 15 dollars
a foot. A good surveyor will do a compression test on the engine and
run the boat as part of the survey. You can find surveyors on the
SAMs or NAMs site.

On the two that I've had done, I had pretty good luck with the
surveyor that the yard recommended. They handed me a list of six
surveyors and I picked one. Turns out the guy is also a certified
insurance surveyor and really knew his stuff.

You can have a good mechanic go through the engine, but at 250 hours,
a compression test and a test run with the surveyor would be more than
sufficient. A surveyor will do all the checks you listed.

And go along with the surveyor, ask questions. I had a Topaz surveyed
and as we were going along, I learned a ton about how the survey is
done and he found a ton of stuff that I missed on the first pass.

It's worth the time and money.

Later,

Tom