I started working at this dealer about 1 and a half years ago. On one of my first days I was out in the yard to get myself a idea how it was layed out at this time I found the "deadbeat row" boats left by customers. I first spoted a old v-drive and a couple other cool looking boats that could use some work if I could get them cheap enopugh so I asked about them. Most of them had a bigger bill agenst them than I was willing to pay but I did end up with the v-drive.
After about 2 months I saw the cheap tarp was coming off a boat in deadbeat row and went to throw it back on. There it was a nice red hydrostream. I took down the hin# and went to hydrostream.org to decipher what it was I had no idea. It turned out to be a 1991 vegas with a mariner 200 on it. I let it go for a while then I went into the computer to see why it was there. It came in for a oil alarm, compression and leakdown test and trailer lights. I found I replaced the tech that worked on it so I had no idea of the condition but I was still interested the customer owed less that $150 but for some reason it was left. By this time winter was here and the tarp was long gone, so I ended up shrink wraping it after it sat in the shop for 3 weeks to dry. When I was doing this my boss asked why I was interested in this junk boat as well as just about everyone in the shop.
I asked about it and my manager said sure I could get it after we did a sherifs sale. I was a little uneasy as anyone could come to the sale and buy it. In order to do the sale we had to get lean releases and send a letter to the last known address of the owner. It took about 5 monthes to get this stuff in order but the person that was in charge wasn't in any hurry, she also thought it wasn't worth my time to put into a old boat.
I was talking to our title person trying to put a little pressure on her as by now it was spring and my viper was no where near being done. We were talking and I said the owner has to be in jail or dead to not pay the bill, so we started to look on the net and found he was in prison and was going to be there for a while. I convinced her to give me a 21 day permit so I could see if it needed any other work. I brought it in the shop and did most of the normal checkover points. what I didn't look at was the steering cables I lookad at the attatchment points but never turned the wheel. The cable was shot, I posted a picture of it a while ago. I brought it back to the shop monday morning and my boss actually saw thw boat after I spent all weekend cleaning the dust and junk out of it from sitting outside for a year. His story changed a bit after he saw that he could get some good money for it so I worked out a deal with him and we came up with me paying the original bill and $1000 of the storage bill. He also said I could keep using it as long as I didn't change too much.
I started with a sea star steering and then a hot foot and jackplate At the time I didn't think that was too much. Well after all this and still no work on a title I called the dnr and found out what needed to be done. I mailed all the letteres to the people and on wed. night I was in the middle of a side job pulling a IO block and I got a call that one of the 2 lean holders were coming in the next day to look at the boat. I hurried with the block and raced home in a panic to get all my stuff of and reinstall the stock parts. I didn't have time to get my steering system out or my jack plate off. I wanted it to look like crap but still be safe and I didn't want to damage anything in case they looked at it and didn't want it. I cut all the zip ties wolding the wires and just let them lay in the gunnel. In the morning I took every geavel road to work I could think of anout 20 miles. Once I got it to work I was still scared so I drained the fluid from the steering and opened the bypass screw on the trim pump so it would go up but come right back down.
After all this work they decided they didn't want it and signed the lean release last week. I spent about a week reinstalling parts then it was all worth it, friday I got it registered in my name. My $1150 stream that no one wanted.
