Flummuxed after survey

[mudskipper]

I am buying a 40 sundeck trawler in NJ. The first day of the survey went ok,many things were fine. The Two 200 gallon side tanks have bad bubbly rust on the seams. They must have used crappy welding rod. I can't quite live with that, so I guess I will have to go back to the owner to adjust the price if I want to proceed with the sale. It also needs two new mufflers. Has anyone recently done a ' tank ectomy ' replacement on a large albin? any guess on price? I think I still want the boat. Should I have my head examined ? Can the surveyor do this too? Sitting on the dock with scarey mary and juicy lucy.

[RobS]

As we all know, every boat is going to have problems, either now or later or both. I’d rather find a boat with correctable problems now and let that chip away at the final price then have a boat survey 100% and then the problems start coming on shortly after ownership. At least now you can replace some old with new at the seller’s cost.

Not familiar with the boat so can’t comment on the fuel tank removal and replacement. All depends on access. Is it a matter of unscrewing and removing decks or cutting up the boat….

[Panhdjoe]

Tank replacement has been a recent topic, I think it was on the Classic trawlers forum, Cutting the old tanks up in the boat to remove them and installing 4 smaller tanks avoids engine removal and cuts cost. I have seen estimates up to around 20k to replace tanks with original style

[jleonard]

Tank replacement is a major job, but doable. I can verify the 10K per side, one of the boats I looked at 4 years ago had just had them done and that was the bill.
If you do replace tanks consider making the capacity smaller. These boats don't need 360 gallons of fuel aboard.