Buying my first Donzi

[Knute]

Hey Guys,

Well I recently turned 40 and I think I deserve a Donzi! Also, our daughter just turned 4 and the wife agrees :biggrin.: that we need to start spending more time at the lake (Cumberland). My family started boating (Glaspar G3) at Lake Cumberland when I was 3 so I've got a tradition to uphold! I've been checking out the forum for almost a year now trying to get up to speed on Donzis. I've finally found one in the Baltimore/D.C. area that I'm interested in, so I'm going to check it out next week. It's a 1999 Classic 18 with black stripes, 350 mpi, and a windshield. Before I check it out I've got several questions I need help with:

1. Being a lake guy, I have no experience with salt water boats. The owner claims to have used Salt Away regularly. Are there any good checks or visual indicators that the engine/drive were flushed correctly and regularly?

2. The owner says the boat doesn't have an hour meter but he has logged 63 hours. Could a '99 Donzi come without an hour meter? Does the ECM retain engine hours?

3. Any other things I should check out?

Hopefully the boat is as nice as the owner says it is. I really want to put it on a new salt-free Lake Cumberland diet!

Thanks for the help!
Kent

[gcarter]

Welcome Kent;
Wonderful place to learn all about things Donzi. There a lot of members here who can help a lot about late model Classics.

George

[Fish boy]

Hi Kent,
just wanted to welcome you to the regisrty and donzi family. Sorry i do not have the answers you need (I have oppinions, but there are some folks here who will give you really good answers), but wanted to welcome you just the same.

Good luck with your purchase, post pics when you get her, and keep an eye out in the events and gatherings section so you can bring your her to one of the get togethers. You will not meet a better group of people.

Welcome,

Fish

[MOP]

Being a salt rat a lot of years my advice is to look the boat adn its mechanicals, salt boats do fine if cared for well. The age of that boat I would check to see if it had recent exhaust manifolds and risers. Try to look around the areas of the engine that are hard to see, try to spot rusting accessories, out drive corrosion, motor mounts, electrical wire attaching points ETC. If it shows of good care then go and hire a good surveyor, you may wince at his fee but it is money well spent. You can find accredited surveyors in your area by going on the net or by contacting local boat brokers.

Phil / MOP

[Ranman]

Welcome Knute. I have essentially the same boat you are looking at but of the 1997 vintage. It is possible that boat did not come with an hour meter. I'm pretty sure it was an option. My meter is mounted in the engine compartment on the firewall. Any proficient Merc mechanic can use his scan tool to pull the hours from the ECM as the info is indeed stored there. My 97 was checked last summer during some routine service work. The ECM reported within 5 hours of the meter which currently reads in the 210 range.

As MOP mentioned, a full survey is your best bet. It's cheap insurance to be sure there is no major issues with the boat. It seems the going rate for a quality survey should be no more than $15/ft. That's $270 for a classic 18, money well spent. You should know that the surveyor generally will not have a scan tool as the scan tools are typically owned and used my mechanics and not surveyors so if you want to verify the hours you may need to spend a littl more $$$ on a mechanic or seperate test. Good luck in your search.

On a side note,even if you don't actually purchase a Donzi by late May, I will strongly suggest you come out for the AOTH IV (Awakening Of The Horses) which is in late May on lake Cumberland. See the events and Gatherings forum of this site for more details You will have the opportunity to meet many people of the Donzi family and can learn a lot in a short period. All Donzi enthusiasts are welcome, boat or no boat and we really have a great time.

[Digger]

Kent welcome aboard! Echo Randy's comments, come on down to Jamestown for AOTH, boat or no boat, you can scam rides all day and talk smack about boats! keep us posted on your search.

[ToonaFish]

Wow, you are so going to love having all the Donzis in the country converge on your lake every year! Come to Cumberland in May and expect to be changed forever... well, since you are already Donzi hunting, maybe just changed more!

Bunches,

Celene 'wait til he hears the Jamestown wake up call'

[knee deep]

A solid survey is your best insurance. You may also want to have a mechanic thoroughly go through the motor and run the boat to check shifting etc. I am not familiar with new fangled electronics on gas engines but would suggest a compression test as the few gas boats that I have sea-trialed are usually compression tested. A few hundred bucks spent up front beats the heck out of $$$ money problems later on....

[smoothie]

Welcome aboard buckeye!
All I can add is take your time to find what your looking for,every boat for sale is a good deal at the right price.good luck with your quest.

[Knute]

Wow, thanks for all of the replies and welcomes! As far as AOTH goes, it's already on the calendar! I'm looking forward to meeting all of you and checking out all of the Donzis.:hyper: Randy, I hope you're feeling better by now. I spend a lot of time on dirt bikes so when I read about your plight I could relate. I've had my share of morphine but how did you manage the flat screen and the internet?! :cool: I could almost look forward to that. Then again...

The survey sounds like a good idea. I'm fairly competent mechanically (I was an engineer for Edelbrock through the late 80's and early 90's) but there are many boat specific issues that someone with experience should look at. Plus it might save me a trip to Maryland if the boat has problems. I checked both NAMS and SAMS for surveyors in MD and found quite a few. Has anyone had a good experience with a surveyor in MD?

Thanks again,
Kent

[Ranman]

Thanks for the kind words. We'll have to tell some lies over a beer at AOTH in Kentucky. :beer:

[ITTLFLI]

Kent,

Welcome to the club! I agree with all the above posts on what to look for.

I am located in Cincinnati, as well as another member Jerry Eisele. If you want to take a look at some 18's and 22's feel free to shoot me an email. I had a 22 that we ran Cumberland with and it worked out great!! I now have an x-18 and really don't plan on running the lake as much.

Byron

[boldts]

Kent, welcome to the Registry and hopefully the Donzi family soon. I live outside Columbus, OH and am acting President of the club who organizes the annual Lake Cumberland gathering in May. I hope to meet you soon with or with-out a Donzi boat. One of the best things about our gathering is the diversity and number of different Donzi and other Aronow boat models that have continued to grace us with their presence each year. You won't meet a better group of people when we get together!

I wish I could help with your salt water questions, but I too have always had fresh water boats so far. Let me just give you a demonstration of what a Donzi does for it's owner. I first owned a 18' Classic built in 1969. While being a fresh water boat, I loved to take the boat to Lake Erie which because of it's shallow water, can kick up to compare to the ocean in a matter of minutes. Anyway, I worked for the local APBA offshore group as a patrol boat during their races. When I would launch the Classic, so many by-standers wanted to know about the boat and admired it. Until finding the Registry, I really had no idea what a Donzi was all about except that it looked fast while sitting still.

While I've set the stage, one race weekend, Lake Erie had a storm threatning to blow through at any time. I launch the 18 as if it were a calm sunny day on the local lake. Many of the other patrol boat owners couldn't believe I was going to run my Classic that day. Here is the best part for me at least. After every race I attended, I liked to run a lap of the race course so I could always go home to my inland lake and say, I ran a race in my mind. This day the swells were 5 to 6' high. I was by myself, so I set out to run my lap. What an experience! Race boat owners had lined up at the launch ramp and cheered as I brought my Classic back to the trailer. (I don't know if that was because I returned safely or because on that day, my Classic and I ran the race and won!) I'll never forget talking to the drivers about the experience and how my 18' Classic brought me back home safely. I later at another race was offered a chance to drive a real race boat which was so cool!

I've got another one where I took this same 18' Classic down to Sarasota, FL for the annual Donzi owners rally. Again, on a very ruff day on the Sarasota Bay, my Donzi got me home safely! Donzi boats are built for big water. Launching off the top of a 6' swell, landing in the belly of that wave and excelerating back up the back-side of the next swell is something you can do in a Donzi when a lot of other 18' boats would stay on the trailer.

I too have a daughter now who is 6 yrs old. While I loved the 18 Classic, one of the reasons I traded it for a 22 Classic was to add some protection for her at the age of 4. Until you experience the difference between a 22' Classic and an 18' Classic, you might think 4' isn't that big of a deal. I'm just saying you might want to look at a 22 also before making your final choice.

Sorry, back on subject now...... Good luck in your search! Byron and Jerry in Cincinnati are good people. I highly recommend looking them up either here or on the Midwest Donzi Club website. Jerry has owned every size Classic built and can tell you anything about the boats you would want to know except what to look for in a salt water boat. :biggrin:

[Knute]

Thanks Byron and Scott. You can count on me bugging you "locals" more when I get the 18! Scott, I thought seriously about the 22 but concluded I want to start out small and see how it goes. Besides, if I got a 22 to start out with what would I have to look forward too?!

Also, I hooked up with a surveyor who is located near the boat in MD so I should have a report back by the end of the week.:crossfing

Thanks again for the help.
Kent