Originally Posted by
Big E 757
This is a question for you boat owners out there. My brother in law and I are looking into a very used boat. We have a family property on a river in Illinois and want something for pulling the kids skiing and tubing. Right now all we have is a pontoon boat (my parents) and a sea doo wave runner. Every boat we’ve liked on boat trader the last few days has been bought before we could get to it.
Anyway, there is a 1998 Sea Ray 190 Bow Rider for sale that looks decent. My bro-in-law said at one time Sea Rays didn’t have a very good reputation, and I was thinking it was Bayliner that had the bad reputation back in the 80’s and 90’s. I’m not asking for anyone to solve our dispute, but does anyone have any good reliability information about late 90’s early 00’s Sea Ray boats? It has a 5.0 liter, mercruiser EFI engine and looks well taken care of from the pictures. They’re asking over $12K which is high according to NADA. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time negotiating the right price though, if I’m setting myself up for a headache.
Does anyone have any experience with 20ish year old Sea Ray boats, if so I’d love to hear it. Feel free to PM me or post here. Thanks.
The kids are going to want to wakesurf, which you can't do behind an inboard-outboard. I'd only look at inboards, myself. However, if the river isn't deep enough (more than about 12 feet), you can't produce a very good wave no matter what boat you have...so that angle would be moot.