1979 Century Arabian

[Corts60]

Hi everyone,

Thought I’d share a little intro on my newly acquired Century ski boat. She’s the 200 model with a 228hp 305 and outdrive. I got the boat for pretty cheap because the current owner couldn’t get it running. I found all kinds of hack work on the engine: he had the batt cable going to the slave solenoid instead of the starter solenoid. Hooked up the cable correctly and it started cranking. It kept snow balling from there and had to adjust timing, replace points and coil, new plugs, rebuilt carb.

Finally got her fired up only to find whoever worked on it last didn’t seal the risers to the exhaust manifolds properly and I was getting water in cylinder #7. So off came the manifolds and dipped them in muriatic acid to break down the rust and see if I had cracks. They were indeed cracked on the outside, but not internally. Risers were in good shape. Put them all back together with new gaskets and ground out the exterior cracks and backfilled with high temp JB weld. These manifolds are spendy, so I’m going to run it this way and see how well the JB weld holds.

Well, after getting the engine squared away, I found the upper gear shaft seal was blowing gear oil into the bellows, so off comes the outdrive and it’s getting new seals and driveshaft. We’re getting close though! As soon as I get the drive back from the shop, I’ll throw it on and take this old girl for a test.

The boat itself is in amazing shape. Garaged almost all its life and I think pretty low hours based on the condition and function of everything. Even the trailer is in great shape with old G78 tires which I’m pretty sure are the original tires.

I’ll shut up now and show some pics. I buffed it out completely and started fixing a bunch of details and re-doing all the wood including replacing the boot stripe decals. So here are some before and after pics.