HIN decipher

Sammy Hooker

Sammy Hooker

New Member
Jun 9, 2019
28
Boat Info
1981 SeaRary 255 Sedan flybridge
Engines
tw470 Mercs
Howdy, gents! New to the club! I'm about to embark on a restoration/renovation on an old sedan flybridge and was looking for some help deciphering the exact year and model. All I can get is it's a 255 model. Here's the HIN.. Thanks for any input :)
20190607_135125.jpg
 
12 month of 1980. 255 sedan bridge as I understand it.
Or should I say sundancer bridge?
 
Somewhere in there, there is a letter or number that identifies the location it was built. If it's the "A", possibly ours may have been at the same place around the same time. Ours is A1080-245SDC. Was told the C in ours was due to it being a custom build. (hard top without the command bridge)
 
Thornton69 said:
Somewhere in there, there is a letter or number that identifies the location it was built. If it's the "A", possibly ours may have been at the same place around the same time. Ours is A1080-245SDC. Was told the C in ours was due to it being a custom build. (hard top without the command bridge)
Click to expand...
That's cool! thanks for the info!
 
Thornton69 said:
Somewhere in there, there is a letter or number that identifies the location it was built. If it's the "A", possibly ours may have been at the same place around the same time. Ours is A1080-245SDC. Was told the C in ours was due to it being a custom build. (hard top without the command bridge)
Click to expand...
. Do you have some more pics of yours I could see anywhere?
 
Actually, don't really have many of just the boat. Most the pics I have taken was for references while working on it or is just in the back ground of family and fishing shots. They are a heavy solid hull as you know. A great platform for building a fishing machine for the waters up here. We are not too far from Alaska and usually run it from March to October. I upgraded the engine and drive to a 5.7 Vortec/Bravo 2 combo.
IMG_20160427_165526.jpg IMG_20160306_120714.jpg
 
Thornton69 said:
Actually, don't really have many of just the boat. Most the pics I have taken was for references while working on it or is just in the back ground of family and fishing shots. They are a heavy solid hull as you know. A great platform for building a fishing machine for the waters up here. We are not too far from Alaska and usually run it from March to October. I upgraded the engine and drive to a 5.7 Vortec/Bravo 2 combo.
View attachment 71007 View attachment 71008
Click to expand...
That's a damn nice looking boat! What's the model? I'm planning on removing the flybridge and just having a hard top so it'd look similar to yours, then full power conversion to Suzuki o/be
 
Thanks. The model is a 245SDC. It's actually registered as an '81 as I am guessing yours may be too. There was no records of it with Sea Ray. Believe the C was for custom. It is basically a 245SDB without the bridge. I have seen some pics of some mid to late 70' 245's without the bridge but haven't seen any others from the early 80's. We picked it up 6 years ago with the intentions of building it up to meet our needs.
It's not looking real nice inside right now. Had to tear out the rear cabin wall stb side to do stringers.
IMG_1349.JPG IMG_1348.JPG
You have a nice hull to work with for your repower project. The transom has 3/4" of glass on the outer shell and close to 5/8" in the bottom. We've been caught in some real nasty weather with this one and it handled it like a champ. Have tossed the idea around of doing the pod thing ourselves, but will probably stay with the I/O. Thinking we will have a tough time beating the combination in it now.
Check out this thread if you haven't seen it. He pretty much did what you are planning.
www.clubsearay.com/index.php?threads/76-custom-sea-ray-restoration-almost-complete.90026/
 
Yeah, you gotta nice ride! I have seen that guys thread and have been chatting with him. I saw it another remodel job where the guy actually cut down the flybridge to a hardtop and put twin Suzuki's on the back, and now I can't find that guy's thread for nothing lol I've watched this searay flybridge sit on the side of I-5 in Everett for probably close to 10 years and always thought it would be a cool project and all of a sudden it popped up on Craigslist last week for 250 bucks LOL of course I had to grab it and bring it home tomorrow
 
Thornton69 said:
Thanks. The model is a 245SDC. It's actually registered as an '81 as I am guessing yours may be too. There was no records of it with Sea Ray. Believe the C was for custom. It is basically a 245SDB without the bridge. I have seen some pics of some mid to late 70' 245's without the bridge but haven't seen any others from the early 80's. We picked it up 6 years ago with the intentions of building it up to meet our needs.
It's not looking real nice inside right now. Had to tear out the rear cabin wall stb side to do stringers.
View attachment 71048 View attachment 71049

www.clubsearay.com/index.php?threads/76-custom-sea-ray-restoration-almost-complete.90026/
Click to expand...
. This will be my second go-round on a searay remodel. A modernized and converted a 76 SRV hardtop 240 a few years ago.

https://www.bdoutdoors.com/forums/threads/judyann-gettin-a-makeover-a-novel.464059/
 
Your boat has what the Coast Guard called the straight year format. There were two HIN formats before 1984. One ended with a model year designation such as M80E meaning it was a Model 1980 and E meant it was built in December.

Then there was yours, the straight year format, that ended with the month and year of build. in this case December 1980, which was a 1981 model, because the model year ran from 1 August of the year before (1980) to July 31 of the next year, 1981. Everything made in that period was a 1981 model year.

SER is the manufacturer ID Code for Sea Ray (I used to be one of the people that issued MICs to boat manufacturers)
8468A is assigned by Sea Ray. The A could be a factory designator but you'd have to ask Sea Ray. They can put whatever they want in those five digits.
The 1280 is when it was built (actually it can be anytime between when they started building until it leaves the factory)
All those numbers after the first twelve are not part of the HIN. It is something Sea Ray assigns to identify the model and only Sea Ray can tell you what it means. Here's a quote from my article HIN 101 for Boatowners.

"Just to confuse the issue even further, before 1984 there were two ways to put the date of certification on the HIN. It could look like this ABC000011272, or ABC00001M73E. Both of these are valid and indicate a boat built in December 1972, (hence 12 and 72 on one, or M for model year 73 and E for the month of December). This was very confusing so in 1984 the current HIN was adopted."
http://newboatbuilders.com/pages/hottopics.html
See USCG HIN 101 http://www.uscgboating.org/library/boating-safety-circulars/BSC70.pdf#basics
For more info see "What Is An HIN http://www.pcmarinesurveys.com/Whats a HIN .htm
 
Last edited:
Sammy Hooker said:
Howdy, gents! New to the club! I'm about to embark on a restoration/renovation on an old sedan flybridge and was looking for some help deciphering the exact year and model. All I can get is it's a 255 model. Here's the HIN.. Thanks for any input :)View attachment 70974
Click to expand...
1981-1983, great boats. I should have a lot of pics.
 
Hi everyone. I just bought a boat last Thursday and I'm trying to find out what model it is. I don't have a pic of the hin but the one on the registration is SER10M32017. It's registered as a 79 here's a few pictures that I have on my phone
 

Attachments

  • 123_1.jpeg
    123_1.jpeg
    219.7 KB · Views: 176
Newtoboating said:
Hi everyone. I just bought a boat last Thursday and I'm trying to find out what model it is. I don't have a pic of the hin but the one on the registration is SER10M32017. It's registered as a 79 here's a few pictures that I have on my phone
Click to expand...
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20190617-070152_Drive.jpg
    Screenshot_20190617-070152_Drive.jpg
    105.3 KB · Views: 150
That HIN you provided has only 11 digits. It should be 12. SER is Sea Ray, 10M32 is the number assigned by Sea Ray and 017X is the date of manufacturer. I suspect the last one (x) is a 9 which would make the last four 0179. Which is January 79 which makes it a 79 model (model year back then was from Aug 1 to July 31 of the next year, in this case Aug 1978 to July 79. Makes it a 79 model.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
113,095
Messages
1,425,872
Members
61,018
Latest member
IslandGirls1020
Back
Top