Owners Manual required reading?

[Daphne444]

I just purchased my first boat, a used 1990 Bayliner Capri 1800 with a Force 90HP outboard. The previous owner did not have the owners manuals for either the boat or the outboard, however he did give me a Seloc manual for the outboard. I was wondering if there is any really useful information in the owners manual (particularly for the outboard) that I would need to know that I could not just pick up from here reading all the threads or other more general books?

Since I am new to boating I am looking for all the information I can get, these boards are fantastic.

Thanks

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Daphne...welcome to the forum, its a good helpful bunch of people here. Ironically I have exactly the same boat and motor...and year as you. I have both owners manuals for both boat and motor as well.
Let me know what you might be looking for and I will let you know what I find in them.

 

[Daphne444]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Big Prairie - Thanks. Being new I'm not even sure of what questions to ask, but for a start I was just wondering about recommended maintenance procedures & schedules, specific operating procedures; stuff like that. I don't know how specific the owners manual would get.

Daphne

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Sorry about some of the response delays on this. We have friends in town visiting and have been out recreating quite a bit.
What I will probably do around this...at least to start...is to take a quick jpeg or two of the Bayliner (Capri/Trophy) and the Force owners manuals and post them to show what they look like.
Specific info in there is possible but it may have to be scanned or similar.....would that be some sort of copyright infringement? who knows.
That said, they are both reasonably informative. The Bayliner one includes the electrical wiring diagrams which is fairly helpful.
Again the applicable year for these manuals is 1990. If they apply to other years...well thats just good news.
I'll try to post that jpeg sometime this week.

 

[Daphne444]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Big Prairie - I hope that you are out getting some good use of your boat. Anything that you can provide would be helpful, thanks.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Daphne hopefully you will a little patient on this. We have a bunch of company this week and I haven't found reasonable time to get the initial photos going.
I glanced at them the other night and there is some useful info in there...primarily the basic boat wiring diagrams for both the Capri series and the Trophy series.

 

[Daphne444]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Big Prairie - I can certainly patient, I really appreciate your help.

As a side question (since you have the exact same outboard) have you ever run it on ear muffs? If so, how much water did you get to come out the 2 bleed holes (pee holes) on the outboard? I have been afraid to run it much past 30 seconds on ear muffs since I cannot get much water to come out there. The over temp alarm has never gone off, but being so new I'm afraid to damage the engine.

Thanks

 

[Daphne444]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Big Prairie,

As it turns out I will have plenty of patients, due to some bad news on my engine. I had it at the marina for a checkout and tune up. My hope was that a professional would get it working well so I could have a reference as to how it sounds and performs when all is well, then I would take over the maintenance from there. Well...they found that the center piston has low compression (#1:120, #2:80, #3:120), and indeed when he pointed it out the engine does sound rough.

The plugs are pretty new, but there is a little dark accumulation on #2 so I don't think it is just a head gasket problem. Since the mechanic said that a Force is not worth rebuilding, I have to decide if it is something that I can tackle myself. I'm fairly handy, I have completely rebuilt small 4-strokes and changed things like water pumps and timing belts on cars, but I have never done a large engine complete rebuild. I'll do some reading and start a new thread to get some advice.

I think that your images may still be handy if I get things running again.

Thanks

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Daphne
...quickly here are what the (2) Bayliner/Force manuals look like. The Bayliner manual has a lot of the standard boat owner stuff in it....nothing hugely specific. However it does have wiring information on the Bayliner/Trophy boats...starting with the Capri 15' up to the Trophy 19' and including all the Capri stuff in between.
The Force manual has a more technical stuff in it...quite good actually.
More to come.....just a quick snapshot here.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

...for the record I'm working on this a bit Daphne. I scanned a couple of pages of the wiring diagrams for the 1990's Bayliners. When I get the file format and size sorted out a bit....I'll post them here.

 

[Daphne444]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Bigprairie,

Thanks for the effort, no big hurry. I appreciate the help.

 

[BAYLINER185]

Re: Owners Manual required reading?

Here is a link to the closest info you may find from bayliner:

http://www.bayliner.com/showroom_archives.asp?modelid=3&year=2000&reqtype=1,9,23

Sure there is a 10 year differance between the boats in question but Im sure alot of the info is basicly the same.

Hope that helps a little until Bigprairie1 posts the info for you.

Vic