new to boats

[daffid]

hi im new to boats and was thinking of getting a bombard 380 with a 15 hp 4 stroke motor. and ive heard that you cant lay a 4 stroke motor on its side because it damages it. and i wanted a boat i could fold up and put it in the car does anyone know anything about 4 stroke motors any help appriciated

[Poly]

Daffid, if you lay a 4stroke down the wrong way the sump oil can get back into the cylinders and then when you try to start it you are trying to compress oil rather than fuel/air mixture - which won't happen - so best case you can't turn over the engine and worst case you bend bits of metal and cost yourself a lot.

The good news is that normally you can lie a 4 stroke engine down just only in certain ways. The manual should make this clear (although I think they could do with some brightly coloured stickers on the actual engines). If you do lie the engine down wrong its not automatically a problem - stand the engine up right, remove the spark plugs, turn it over by hand a few times, clean and refit the plugs, check and top up oil level and off you go.

I am guessing you are going to do a PB level 2 course to get you started - and good training centre should be able to spend 10 minutes with you to demonstrate that procedure.

[daffid]

thanks for your help

[MrT]

Daffid,

I agree with Polwart about laying down the engine, but think that a 4-stroke 15 might be a bit under-powered for a 3.8m SIB. I have just bought a 3.8 Honda Honwave Air-V floor and have a 2-Stroke Mariner 15 which pushes it along nicely but i would imagine its a lot lighter than a 15hp 4 stroke. Anything big than a 15 though is getting a bit big to cart around in your car so my advice would be get a 15 2 stoke, or go for a 20-25 4 stroke but keep the boat on a trailer although that defeats the object of having a boat that folds away!

One other bit of advice is get yourself a Bravo 12 High pressure pump taking the strain out of inflating your boat each time. The inflatable floors on a lot of the new boats needs around 11.7 PSI in, and this is the only electric pump that can do it. If you are interested i amd selling one on eBay that has a built-in battery-ideal for inflating at the waters edge or away from your vehicle without carrying a seperate battery pack around. to have a look search for Bravo 12 BST HP Batt and you will see it as its the only one on there.

I only wish they were available years ago as i have been struggling with my 3 metre sib for 7 years!

Happy Boating

[matt h]

agree will polwart!!