We have a few mighty sad looking hoses on our boat that I am almost certain are original equipment on our 1967 Commander! These are the short pieces of hose connecting various pieces of the engine cooling and fresh water cooling system together. Some of them are swelled way out (more than 2x their original diameter) and very soft to the touch. I have strapped a few extra hose clamps loosely around some of them in places to keep them from swelling out any more and bursting!
I know, I know, I am flirting with trouble. But we had had so many things to do to just get this boat to run that the wholesale hose replacement hasn't been the highest priority so far (we have replaced some however). I do look at those remaining hoses each time we run the engines and shake my head, and replacing them is going to happen in the near future.
We took the boat out for a 3 hour cruise today -- it was a beautiful 75 degree sunny day here. We even fired up our vintage VHF radio and had the bridge tender of one low bridge raise the span for us (it was cool seeing the cars and pedestrians waiting for the span to get lowered again -- some waved at us). Portland is sometimes called "Bridge City" due to all the bridges over the Willamette River, which runs through downtown.
I think (hope) we are finally getting over the hump on this boat -- the engines ran flawlessly today after months of fighting with fuel system problems. We have rebuilt/replaced both carbs, installed new fuel pumps and all fuel plumbing, and cleaned our fuel tanks (we sucked LOTS of crud out of the tanks with a home-built vacuum system).
Here are a couple of pics from today:
Best wishes, Curt...
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1967 fiberglass 38' Chris Craft Commander Sportfisher with twin 427 CID 300 HP engines.
