1990-1993 Weekender 250/270

Me, too! Let us know.
 
Was a great summer. Put almost 100 hours on the 454, wife got her first king salmon, 7yr old had the biggest perch of the season, and plenty of beach time after about mid July. We spent a few nights on it, it's tight to fit 3 in the cabin, but with the camper canvas the deck is pretty comfy. Still have a freezer full of salmon that should get us to spring, when we'll do it all over again.

I have plenty of changes to make to help the fishing side of things, I'll be adding a couple rod trees to make my spread more flexible, and two trolling bags to get the speed down a little more. Carb needs rebuilt as it's hard to start, my transducer took a crap late in the season, and the bravo 1 needs some tightening up, it wanders way too much at idle.

It doesn't do any one thing great, but it does a lot of things really well, and was very easy to transition between fish and beach and back without any tools. 5 minutes to transition from one activity to another at the dock, so far very happy with it.
 

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Good to hear. Lots of hours! I have the same boat ('92 270 Weekender). I have come from the performance boat world so lots adjustment for me. Mine has the same issues as yours with the bow steering and hard starting. Not sure if the carb issue can be repaired. I might rebuild it over the winter but in the past it made very little difference. Doesn't cost much to find out. I have had several of these engines over the years with four of them being brand new and they all were a hassle to start. That said they always eventually start and run great. I have my drive off right now for maintenance and have checked the gimbal ring bushings, etc. and all appears to be tight so the bow steering might be a characteristic of the boat. Others may have some input on that.
I haven't had a boat in 30 years that wouldn't run close to 80 mph and some above but for some reason I really like this boat. It is just easy to own after all of the temperamental performance boats over the years. It is relaxing and easy to work on. As you say, it does everything very well and easy to enjoy without breaking the bank.
 
That's awesome to see you getting out there and making some memories. Sounds like your purchase worked out well.
Got to say though, it blows my mind to see that many rods out at one time. We only run 2 out here for salmon and that can often be too many at once for the master baiter. We do run up to 5 swinging on the hook bottom fishing.
 
Good to hear. Lots of hours! I have the same boat ('92 270 Weekender). I have come from the performance boat world so lots adjustment for me. Mine has the same issues as yours with the bow steering and hard starting. Not sure if the carb issue can be repaired. I might rebuild it over the winter but in the past it made very little difference. Doesn't cost much to find out. I have had several of these engines over the years with four of them being brand new and they all were a hassle to start. That said they always eventually start and run great. I have my drive off right now for maintenance and have checked the gimbal ring bushings, etc. and all appears to be tight so the bow steering might be a characteristic of the boat. Others may have some input on that.
I haven't had a boat in 30 years that wouldn't run close to 80 mph and some above but for some reason I really like this boat. It is just easy to own after all of the temperamental performance boats over the years. It is relaxing and easy to work on. As you say, it does everything very well and easy to enjoy without breaking the bank.

It sure acts like it's just draining fuel back, long crank to get fuel back in the bowl. I'll try the rebuild regardless, I know many people say that's just how these old 454's are, but my automotive quadrajet ones aren't hard starting like this after sitting for a couple days.

I do love the simple layout of this boat, it's just an oversized old school runabout. Glad to see another owner of one here, they are out there but seem hard to find. And while no speed demon, it moves well enough for me.
 
That's awesome to see you getting out there and making some memories. Sounds like your purchase worked out well.
Got to say though, it blows my mind to see that many rods out at one time. We only run 2 out here for salmon and that can often be too many at once for the master baiter. We do run up to 5 swinging on the hook bottom fishing.

I need more for next season! JK, I just want to get some more flexibility. It's Not uncommon to run 12+ here for salmon, so long as you have enough licenses on the boat. 3 rods per, so with the family I could run 9. 4 boards, 2 dipsy, 3 rigger would be fine for the 3 of us. Get a 4th and id like to get to 10 for those days you are trying to cover a lot of water. I have the equipment, just need to tweak the layout and add a pair of short trees. Plus, having somewhere to go with stripped rods when you get something big on would be nice. We ran into that issue twice this year, just throwing rods on the floor which I hate doing.
 
Fuel does drain back and agree it was not an issue with a Quadrajet. Had many of those and I could always make them work well. There are various starting procedures out there and some of them work some of the time. I'll probably rebuild over the winter and live with the results whatever they are.

One of the easiest boats I have ever owned to work on and maintain. Accessibility is almost unbeatable.

Definitely not fast but with a light load I cruise at 30-32 mph at 3500-3600 rpm. I have reached 42 mph top end at 4200 rpm. I just picked up my prop today after having it worked so I believe I will see a better cruise and top speed in the spring although I am realistic about the boat's capabilities.

Not a lot of these boats out there and they don't seem to stay on the market long. I bought mine last summer for a very good price with the intention of fixing and flipping but I have pretty much decided to keep it for a while. It is just too easy to own and costs of ownership are so much less than my past boats.
 
Good to hear. Lots of hours! I have the same boat ('92 270 Weekender). I have come from the performance boat world so lots adjustment for me. Mine has the same issues as yours with the bow steering and hard starting. Not sure if the carb issue can be repaired. I might rebuild it over the winter but in the past it made very little difference. Doesn't cost much to find out. I have had several of these engines over the years with four of them being brand new and they all were a hassle to start. That said they always eventually start and run great. I have my drive off right now for maintenance and have checked the gimbal ring bushings, etc. and all appears to be tight so the bow steering might be a characteristic of the boat. Others may have some input on that.
I haven't had a boat in 30 years that wouldn't run close to 80 mph and some above but for some reason I really like this boat. It is just easy to own after all of the temperamental performance boats over the years. It is relaxing and easy to work on. As you say, it does everything very well and easy to enjoy without breaking the bank.

I had a '93 Chapparal 2550 SX Sport with same set up, 7.4L with Bravo 1. Same bow wandering. It is symptomatic with the deep V with the outdrives.

My solution: added Bennett 12"W x 16"L sport trim tabs, the ones with the dual rams. With tabs all the way down, at idle speeds, wandering virtually disappeared. Single best addition I made to that boat.

Had hard cold starting on it, too. (my current 454 Mag w/ carb has the hard cold starting, too). I know it is there and just live with it. Starts right up when warm.
 
I had a '93 Chapparal 2550 SX Sport with same set up, 7.4L with Bravo 1. Same bow wandering. It is symptomatic with the deep V with the outdrives.

My solution: added Bennett 12"W x 16"L sport trim tabs, the ones with the dual rams. With tabs all the way down, at idle speeds, wandering virtually disappeared. Single best addition I made to that boat.

Had hard cold starting on it, too. (my current 454 Mag w/ carb has the hard cold starting, too). I know it is there and just live with it. Starts right up when warm.
I had never thought about trying the trim tabs although I doubt that mine extend far enough into the water to make a difference but I'll try that in the spring. Might be a solution for Joe to slow the troll and help with the bow steering.
 
I had never thought about trying the trim tabs although I doubt that mine extend far enough into the water to make a difference but I'll try that in the spring. Might be a solution for Joe to slow the troll and help with the bow steering.

I drop both tabs as soon as I come off plane and start setting up. If it's dead calm, the tabs are good for about a 0.3-0.4mph drop in trolling speed. Not much difference for the wandering, but maybe a small impact. I have noticed that any trim up on the outdrive makes the wandering worse, I have to be 100% down to minimize it.
 
Bill is right about the wandering, nature of of hull single outdrive.
As for carb, yes, it’s a drainback issue. If boat sits all week then Saturday is hard start, come back Sunday and it fires right up. So mechanic told me this trick and it works pretty well.
Don’t touch throttle, crank ignition 5 seconds.
This helps refill the bowl.
Pump throttle 3 to 5 times, pull throttle back and crank the key. She will start, now feather the throttle until she stops stumbling and slowly back throttle until she idles.
After fighting with the hard start for over 2 years, I learned this mid summer and the method works very well.
 
I'm pretty happy with the fuel burn on mine. My last boat had 572's with Dominators and made about 750 hp each. Everything is relative.
 

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It was a big change but wasn't planned that way. I sold my previous boat when the market was favorable with the intention of taking a break for a while. I got bored and needed a project and the 270 Weekender popped up. It was a decent deal and I bought it to fix and flip. I'm keeping it for a while because it is a relaxing boat with no stress. I'm fulfilling the need for speed with racing.
 
A little tidbit of info about wandering... for anyone that's interested ;)

This is just my opinion based on what I've experienced with many, MANY boats over the years (including customer's boats in that figure) :) See what you think... and I'm sure someone else can say all this with much more elaborate words than me!

Wandering, as noted above, is most common with single engine (stern or OB), v-hull boats. However, the extent to how much a certain boat will wander can vary quite a lot from one boat to another with it being (all other variables the same) more noticeable the smaller the boat is. That's just plain physics (well, ALL of this is, actually!) as the force causing the wander has a greater "power to weight ratio", so to say.

There are two main things that cause this. One, is "prop walk" where the spinning of the prop causes the it to want to "walk" sideways as it spins. In other words, a sideways leverage effect on the transom. The hull still wants to go straight (other than for my 2nd reason, below) so that effect is sort of like a rubber band being stretched until the hull's want to go straight overcomes the prop walk and the prop walk "tension" releases and the hull tries to come back to straight - but of course it goes a little past straight due to the nature of how a boat handles in water.

The second cause is the way that the water flows down the side of the hull, especially near the corner at the transom. This corner of the chine, of course, will have a bigger impact on how straight a hull tracks than does the chine at mid-ship. The water flows around the transom chine corner (let's say port side) and, effectively, pulls the boat sideways a bit, to port. That effect can only do so much as the stbd side is trying to do the same thing. The force at the port side gives way and the stbd side pulls. This just keeps going on and on. Once the boat is going faster, the flow at the transom chine changes and this effect is diminished/eliminated - in part due to the shape of the rest of the hull, itself, now controlling more of the boat's attitude.

As a number of you have noted, there's multiple things that can be done and everything you've guys have said is, in one way or another, an attempt to counter the two forces at work here. Because of the variance in hull size/shape/etc, these counter measures will more or less impact from one boat to another.

Tangents...

Single engine boats with "duo props" (Bravo 3 in Merc terms) will experience less wander (when comparing the same hull with/without a B3) due to the (mostly) cancelling of the prop walk effect.

Some boats have (Sea Ray started doing this somewhere around the early 2000's) a recess in the chine along the last few feet. This was done to help eliminate that "pulling" effect by disrupting the water flow at low speeds.

I didn't think this post was going to be as long as it is! But if you take these thoughts into account, you can see how the things you guys are doing to counter the forces are, in fact, valid measures to help. Sometimes tabs help... sometimes trimming down helps... sometimes trimming up helps... sometimes a few hundred more RPM's is all that's needed... sometimes nothing seems to help! Anyways, if you read this far, thanks for reading!
 
Agree with all of the above. A large diameter Bravo II prop makes it more noticeable. My solution will be less idling and more cruising.
 
Agree with all of the above. A large diameter Bravo II prop makes it more noticeable. My solution will be less idling and more cruising.
Have not really noticed any real wandering with ours at idle with minimal and small corrections. It's a pretty heavy boat for it's length though. Likely the difference?
Hard on the the throttle taking off, she will hook pretty good unless you counter-steer it. Believe it is more of a prop walk thing though and different topic.
 

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