ToMorrow44
27 Advantage TCM 800efi
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2008
- Messages
- 2,737
- Reaction score
- 2,827
Well, since others are doing it, I figured I’d chronicle some of the upgrades I’m doing to my boat over the years. After unsuccessfully upgrading to a bigger boat in the offseason, I figured I’d dump a little money in the Advantage and keep making it nicer.
Anyway, my dad had this boat built at the end of 2000, it was delivered in 2001. Originally built with a Teague 620, now it has a Teague 825efi. I bought it from my dad about 5 years ago and have been updating/upgrading things little by little. He hardly used it when I went off to college, so when I bought it, I think the motor/drive had 20 hours on it. It’s been garage kept it’s whole life and the only people to ever work on it are my Dad, myself, and Teague.
Even though we’ve taken hundreds of pictures over the years (a lot on film lol) after several military moves, who knows where the hell they are. I stumbled across these recently, some of the first pictures of it. I think I would have been 14 when this picture was taken:
This I believe was the maiden voyage in April 01. Still one of the best pictures at WOT we’ve ever had.
The boat is actually mostly original, 2001 era. Interior is all original except the seat bottoms which have been redone a few times as they take some abuse getting in/out of the boat. Snap in carpet is original too, although that could use replacement. I have a 2 & 4 year old, so I’m not yet jumping to spend $10k to update the interior so they can spill applesauce and Cheetos on it lol.
Speaking of my kids, this boat has always been a family truckster. Still ski, tube, and wakeboard behind it. Kids have been going since they were 6 weeks old and they LOVE it. They love to drive even though neither of them can actually see, and really all they do it make it harder for me to steer but whatever.
Over the last few years I’ve gone thru and cleaned up some stuff. In 2018 I stripped off almost all the powdercoated parts and had them redone along with all new polished hardware.
Although I’ve only had 2 MSD boxes die over the last 15 years, when the last one died, I figured it was time to do something different. Upgraded to a Daytona Instruments CD-1 which are supposed to be built much better than the MSD boxes. First line in the instruction manual “do not mount on the motor” so I used a bracket made to go on the motor and bolted it to the firewall. Another theory is that the MSD boxes die to to power fluctuations, they’re very voltage sensitive so any spikes or low power from a not-so-great battery will harm them. So I used one of their capacitors in-line with the power leads to smooth that out. If you have problems with MSD boxes dying, try putting a capacitor in there, a lot of people believe that MSD should include the capacitor with the box, I tend to agree. I still carry a spare MSD box in the boat just in case.
Speaking of the above picture , see the notch in The firewall in front of the motor? That was an option from Advantage for boats with a blower motor so the blower pulley would clear. My dad had it built that way even though it didn’t originally have a blower motor...how fortuitous.
Anyway, my dad had this boat built at the end of 2000, it was delivered in 2001. Originally built with a Teague 620, now it has a Teague 825efi. I bought it from my dad about 5 years ago and have been updating/upgrading things little by little. He hardly used it when I went off to college, so when I bought it, I think the motor/drive had 20 hours on it. It’s been garage kept it’s whole life and the only people to ever work on it are my Dad, myself, and Teague.
Even though we’ve taken hundreds of pictures over the years (a lot on film lol) after several military moves, who knows where the hell they are. I stumbled across these recently, some of the first pictures of it. I think I would have been 14 when this picture was taken:
This I believe was the maiden voyage in April 01. Still one of the best pictures at WOT we’ve ever had.
The boat is actually mostly original, 2001 era. Interior is all original except the seat bottoms which have been redone a few times as they take some abuse getting in/out of the boat. Snap in carpet is original too, although that could use replacement. I have a 2 & 4 year old, so I’m not yet jumping to spend $10k to update the interior so they can spill applesauce and Cheetos on it lol.
Speaking of my kids, this boat has always been a family truckster. Still ski, tube, and wakeboard behind it. Kids have been going since they were 6 weeks old and they LOVE it. They love to drive even though neither of them can actually see, and really all they do it make it harder for me to steer but whatever.
Over the last few years I’ve gone thru and cleaned up some stuff. In 2018 I stripped off almost all the powdercoated parts and had them redone along with all new polished hardware.
Although I’ve only had 2 MSD boxes die over the last 15 years, when the last one died, I figured it was time to do something different. Upgraded to a Daytona Instruments CD-1 which are supposed to be built much better than the MSD boxes. First line in the instruction manual “do not mount on the motor” so I used a bracket made to go on the motor and bolted it to the firewall. Another theory is that the MSD boxes die to to power fluctuations, they’re very voltage sensitive so any spikes or low power from a not-so-great battery will harm them. So I used one of their capacitors in-line with the power leads to smooth that out. If you have problems with MSD boxes dying, try putting a capacitor in there, a lot of people believe that MSD should include the capacitor with the box, I tend to agree. I still carry a spare MSD box in the boat just in case.
Speaking of the above picture , see the notch in The firewall in front of the motor? That was an option from Advantage for boats with a blower motor so the blower pulley would clear. My dad had it built that way even though it didn’t originally have a blower motor...how fortuitous.