The one BIG thing we did not know about the boat was how, or even if, the engine ran. The boys at Rawhide had it running when they did their checks on it, but that was last summer. They did not completely drain the water and winterize it correctly, so we were concerned the block may have been cracked, which would cost me a minimum of $1000 and an entire weekend to fix.
My buddy Bob and his son came over tonight and we hooked the engine up to the garden hose and the Ford Explorer up to the battery leads (the boat has no battery). We primed the carb with a little gas and Bobby hit the starter. BAM!!! It sounded like a shotgun went off right next to my head as it backfired. It took me a couple of seconds to shake that off, so we tried again.
This time the results were much better. She started right up and ran great. There was a small leak from somewhere that I could not see, but Bob tightened it up and it stopped. We let it run for a while until my hands were almost frozen, then Tyler took over and held the hose in the intake. We let the engine run about 10 minutes and it purred quite nicely! Whew, what a relief!