1985 Bayliner Capri

When I bought this boat, I wasn't exactly expecting a project. Looking back on it I think EVERY boat turns into a project at some point. If you can afford an expensive boat, AND afford to have it professionally maintained, then more power to you. A working man such as myself who loves boating is often tempted to save money by buying an old boat. You can certainly get some good deals out there. Boats values drop faster than cars for sure. You can buy a whole lot of old boat for not a lot of money. If you are in that position, its best if you can do all or most of the work yourself. What's the point if you buy a big old boat that needs a motor, and then you have to pay a marine mechanic $5000 to put a new motor in it? You may have just as well bought a boat that cost $5000 more, and had a running motor!

Marine mechanics are a lot more expensive than auto mechanics. Most will tell you it's because of the high degree of specialty in the parts and equipment, or the risk of certain failures. Ok, lets face it, a catastrophic failure in a car will leave you on the side of the road while a loss of engine out at sea may cost you your life.  If I may risk a generalization here, boating at some level beyond your basic fishing vessel is usually left to those who have plenty of income to spare. Most marine mechanics are used to dealing with these sorts of people so I think they charge so much not only because of the critical nature of what they do but also because in most cases the person on the other end doesn't flinch when they get a large bill.

I have worked on many cars and motorcycles over the years. I have gone beyond the average shadetree mechanic at this point. I am a fair machinist, welder, fabricator, electrcian...a jack of all trades for sure. I have never hired ANY tradesman in my life. No mechanic, no plumber, no carpenter, no electrician, nothing. Besides working in manufacturing for 23 years, I also have many projects in my spare time that keep me learning. If I ever come across something that I haven't had to deal with before, I look at it as a chance to learn how its done. I would rather spend a couple hundred dollars on tools I don't have than to hire someone. This was exactly the case when I bought this old Bayliner. Somewhere out there, someone can do what you need done. There's no magic involved in anything. Be prepared to fail several times and get frustrated, but you can figure out how to do almost anything if you try. The advent of the Internet hasn't hurt a bit either. There are message boards for almost any indulgence or project that you may have. People in general are very happy to "talk shop" with you about what you are trying to do. I have spent all my life tinkering with broken down junk and trying to make something useful out of it. All of this has been driven by lack of financial resources more than anything, and I have suffered many disappointments and heartbreaks over the years. Somewhere along the line, I developed a true love of mechanics and I maintain that even if I won the ultra mega bazillions lottery tomorrow,  I would have dirty hands the rest of my life.

For boats, the best online resource I have come across is Iboats.com. They cover a broad range of topics and it was a wealth of information to me. Alot of the users are "purists" who sometimes frown upon the silly things I've done to get this boat in the water on a budget, but there are real dangers involved in certain shortcuts, so its good to have that kind of feedback!

I made several mistakes when I bought this boat. I saw it on Craigslist, and I went over there to look at it in the dark! I bought it after looking at it for only about 15 minutes. I took it home without a title in hand for either the boat or the trailer! Luckily it worked out in the end as I did finally get the documents. I also did not hear it run or check it out mechanically. The previous owner said it had been running at the end of the season. I didnt worry too much about it since I am a good wrench. He did mention an intermittent overheating problem. He also told me that sometimes you had to pump the throttle to make it go.

The boat is a 1985 Capri 1950 cuddy with a Volvo power train. Its the AQ125A with the 270 outdrive.

I couldn't get the boat to start. All it would do is make a tremendous backfire out the exhaust. In fact, it blew a hole roughly the shape of my exhaust port through the container I had it dipped in!

                                                                                                     Kaboom!

After doing a compression test, I found zero compression on cylinder number 4. I tore the motor down, and the exhaust valves were all severely burnt. The number 4 valve had crumbled apart on the edges. I noticed that the number 4 exhaust port had erroded or something. It was very thin on one corner. I found out that this was common on the AQ125s. My fix for this was to do a little welding. I used a big lincoln stick welder with an aluminum rod (Had to reverse the power leads) and I built up the thin area and used a file to grind it back into shape. Came out pretty well. The marine shop I buy my parts from told me they have a fix for that as well that includes some machining and inserting a steel insert to give the area the proper shape. The cost for this was $200. If your in the Maryland area, I highly recommend those guys, they are called Cobe Marine and they are in Ft. Smallwood.

I put a new timing belt on while I was in there.

In between all of the initial motor work, I rewired everything on the dash and put new switches with led indicators on them.

I cut a 55 gallon plastic barrel down a bit to make a test tank for the boat, and I got it running. It overheated so I shut it down. I wanted to replace the impeller in the sea water pump. I took the old one into the marine shop and it did not match the one he said I needed. The one I had was a great deal larger. I insisted he match the one I had and he reluctantly did. Then in the car, I noticed that the gasket that was supplied with the new impeller was the right shape, but much larger than my pump housing. I went beck in and got the smaller impeller which came with the right gasket. So another problem was discovered: it had the wrong impeller in it when I got it!  The pump still would not pump very well and so I replaced some if the internals...the scraper and the bearing and the seal. Still, it would not pump very well. I noticed that the cover to the pump had some scoring all around the surface on the inside. I reasoned that this might cause some loss of pressure between the chambers that the rubber fins create when spinning around in there.  I decked the cover, and took just enough material off to make the surface flat again. This did the trick, and it pumped fine after that!

        Some deep scoring                                               About half way down                                                                         All flat.

We went out with the boat and it did in fact take a lot of pumping of the throttle to make it go. Once it smoothed out, it would run at high speed alright, but it was hard to do anything but chug or go very fast. I rebuilt the carburetor, but it had little effect on the problem.  The way it was running got us into trouble one evening at Hoopers Island. We went out about 10 miles and it was rough all day, and getting worse. The trip back took a long time because we could not run at full speed in these conditions, and with the motor running the way it was, all we could do is chug, and it seemed that the motor was running worse and worse as time went by. It got dark, and there are very little lights down on Hooper's...it got very dark and very rough, and the boat was barely moving at this point, and it was a harrowing experience. This made me take a hard look at how this thing was running. Theres just something about mechanics and gearheads...they will actually drive something that runs so badly it scares a normal person. Not a great idea on the water!

                                              Here were the conditions at Hoopers about 20 minutes before we really got scared!

I did several things all at once and the problem went away, but Im not sure exactly which one did the trick. I reamed out the main jet very slightly using a precision bit set. I replaced the old ignition coil with an Accel super stock unit. I soldered new connectors on all of the engine wiring including the alternator leads, using new wires where I felt it necessary. The motor had ALOT of blow by. Lots of smoky crap coming out of the breather hose. So much so that it fouled the plugs in short order. Eventually I pulled the hose from the air filter and let it vent out the back. The hoopers trip was the longest we'd ever run the motor and I think the blowby was fouling the plugs badly towards the end.

So now, it was running decent up and down the throttle, but it started to overheat now and then. I replaced the elbow fitting on the outdrive which was half corroded like they all get. It would cool right down at slower speeds, but as we got up on plane it would overheat because the part of the drive where the elbow is located would come out of the water. Still, after replacing the elbow it sometimes got too hot for my liking so I tried to stay under 25 mph.

We made it through the rest of the first season with the boat with only minor fixes here and there. Once we had 7 people in the boat when we went to watch the fireworks from Baltimore's inner harbor. The boat just didnt want to make it up to speed. At all. We noticed again on a camping trip when we had lots of passengers that this was the case. On our usual fishing trips there were only 3 or 4 of us, and no problems getting up then. This along with the massive blowby made me realize that this motor was in need of a rebuild. As the season neared it's end I spent alot of time thinking about whether or not to rebuild the engine, or push it through another season. I thought and thought about it all winter long.

Come February I was having a REALLY busy month at work. Money was pretty good, and so I set about ordering the parts I would need to rebuild this old Volvo. Now, this motor is a genuine made in Sweden motor, through and through. Some Volvo Pentas are chevy or ford blocks, but this one is all Volvo. The AQ125A was based on the B21 car motor. I kept this in mind when ordering the rebuild parts. Volvo Penta does not even offer new pistons for the AQ125 anymore, but if you are lucky you can find them on a dealer's shelf. Luckily, I didn't need any pistons. As for piston rings, Volvo Penta had them available, for about $80 a set that is. That's $320 for enough rings to rebuild a 4 cylinder?!?!? Sick. Just sick! I made that mistake with the exhaust valves. I bought the genuine Penta valves at $40 a piece. I didn't know at that point what I knew later or I would have never done that. The automotive valves can be had for about 8 bucks a piece.

I went out and bought the foldable engine crane from Harbor Freight. It got terrible reviews on line, but mine worked just dandy!

I figured out what model of Volvo car would have had the exact counterpart motor as my boat, and I checked the big box auto parts stores. No one could help me, so I got most of my parts from Ebay. I rebuilt my AQ125 with automotive parts. The only problem I ran into was the piston rings. The top rings would not fit into the piston grooves. The difference was eleven thousandths. The other rings fit just fine. I used a surface grinder with a magnetic deck to buzz the top rings down enough to fit, giving them enough clearance to expand freely.

I got some kolbenschmidt bearings, beck/arnley seals, and perfect circle rings. The bottom end of this motor was in GREAT shape. The clearances were nice and tight! I honed the cylinders. The pistons were just fine, number 4 had a bit of a ding in it from that chunk of exhaust valve that fell into it way back when. The oil pan was rotted at the flange on one side. There were plenty on Ebay, but all around $100. I found an old Volvo wagon in the junk yard and I pulled the oil pan from that. It took me a couple of hours to get it off, I had to jack the motor up a lot to get enough clearance. It only cost me $20! The windage plate down in the sump area was a bit different on the automotive oil pan, but I cut it out to match my marine unit.

                                                                             Heres my pretty new oil pan!

When I was all done with the rebuild I sold the engine crane on Craigslist for $20 less than I paid for it!! Not bad. It was like a 3 week rental for 20 bucks. Beat that!

The engine water pump felt crappy. I dismantled the marine unit to check out the insides...the bearing was bad for sure. The engine water pump was one of those parts that WAS specific to the marine engine. Or was it? Well, the casting was somewhat different but it did look alot like the automotive units other than that. A new engine water pump from Penta is pretty expensive! Used units are on Ebay for $70 to $100, but I wasn't really keen on that. In true "me" style, this is what I did: I scoped the scrap yard for a Volvo that had a nice water pump. Found one that had been replaced recently. I took the insides out of the automotive unit and pressed them into the marine casting. It fit perfectly! The impeller on the automotive unit had more fins on it than the marine unit had, but so far I've had no cooling problems!

                         Yes, that's the kitchen floor. Sucks not having a garage you know!  Lucky my better half loves fishing!                              

                                 Ready to go back in!

When I started it up in the test barrel after the rebuild, it got hot right away. I noticed the sea water pump was leaking from the back. Turns out the rear seal was bad. I replaced it but the motor still overheated. When I first got the boat, it did not have a thermostat in it. I never noticed until I tore it down to do the rebuild after the first season. I had picked up an automotive thermostat and put it in. Big no-no! Turns out the marine thermostat opens up alot sooner than the automotive unit so I pulled the automotive unit right out of there and that took care of the overheating! The boat runs really well now, no more blowby and it gets up and goes even with a big load on. I've got lots more to get to this year, but hopefully the motor will hold up!