[elimont]

I am a new boat owner and for my first boat I bought a 1996 182 Barchetta. I had a marine repair shop look over the boat and they said it was in great shape well maintained. Ownership so far has been an adventure. Within 10hrs of buying it while towing I had the brake line on the van i was using break, blowing through a stop light. 4hrs in a parking lot I fixed the rusted brake lines and headed from FL to Va. 1.5 hrs later I ran over some debris on I95 cutting the rear heater line. Fixed that and decided this boat didnt want to ride to Va on the back of a minivan. Returned the next week with my 2500 duramax truck ( it was coming home mountains and all no chance in stuff breaking) and picked it up after chaning the trailer axel to a heavier one. Put it into the water in Va and found it would not shift. It had shifted in FL hard but did shift. Dropped it off at a shop after finding that the shift cable was seized and the shift interrupter switch was unhooked (thanks to hour of reading here). Boat was returned with shift cable change but the switch still unhooked. Boat shop said that the distributor was changed to a car one ( not actually a car one but a delco EST). I am still working on hooking this up correctly. Took the boat out again this time it shifts nto good but shifts. Made sure gages are working (fuel is spastic). Got the boat up to 40 MPH and then throttled down, scared me felt like the boat was going to stand on its rear and go to the bottom. Turning is also strange front rides real high and boat leans way to the side. These feelings will take gettign use to. I come from only using jet boats and the feel is nothing like this.

To do winter list: Trim tabs, rewire stereo, figure out the distributor, look over boat from one end to the other and fix everything I can find wrong.

This is a long intro and that bring me up to date. Very glad to find a forum of dedicated people who love their boats. This is a very nice boat very well made nothing like the cheaper Bayliners and such I was looking at. There is more information here than I expected to find on this boat.

[mikeyt]

Welcome aboard Elimont. Sounds like you have some work to do over the next few months. Take it one step at a time & if you have a problem, feel free to post it in the appropriate forum & someone will help you out.