1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Starboard Engine Runs!

I’ve been super busy with other things and haven’t had time to post updates here. I hope to get back into regular posting before long.

Despite the lack of posts here, I have been making progress on the refit. If things go as planned, I’ll begin dismantling Tent Model XXX the first week of June 2023 and splash the boat once I get the green light from my surveyor and insurance company. I’ve decided to keep the boat in a slip at the current marina for a month and will be making sure all necessary systems are 100% before taking off and heading to the marina closest to my home. It’ll be a 15 minute hop on country roads to go mess with the boat instead of the hour+ slog in awful Swamp-zone traffic that I’ve been doing since 2012.

Anyway, I posted my first attempt at getting the engines running last fall. The big news for today is that I recently resolved some problems I was having with the starboard engine, which I’ll cover in a future post, and got it running. It was 52°F overnight, so the engine room was cool when I first tried to start it. I installed oil pan heaters years ago but haven’t been using them, so the engine was at ambient temp. After two attempts cranking the starter for 10 seconds, it lit off on the third try but had a loping idle. The video below was the fourth start, and it jumped to life. Idle is rock-solid and the throttle behaves as it should.

Click “Cancel” after the video ends, or it will autoplay whatever video Rumble is promoting.

Stay tuned! I’ll post more (hopefully) soon.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fuel System Fixes