After fifteen hours on the road today, I made it home with the boat I have dreamed of for thirty some years. It is a 1988 19 foot Almar river jet boat with a 302 and Hamilton 773 pump.

The boat is equipped with two air ride suspension seats up front. The skins on these seats are pretty ratty.

What is the best option for getting them recovered? An auto upholstery shop? Can you purchase new skins like you can for some autos?

I'd steer away from the auto upholstery shop option.
They wouldn't have the experience with the different materials and especially threads used in marine applications.
.
Boat upholstery takes a beating from endless UV along with getting wet all the time.
Stick with a shop specializing in marine upholstery.

As old as those seats are I doubt you'd find a replacement cover, styles as well as the suppliers the boat builders use change over the years.

You're not in the greatest of locations for finding many good marine upholstery shops, I'm falling over top of them along the Florida coast. Might be worth paying for a little shipping and send them over to the Seattle area to a good shop for restoration.

Ya might just look at replacing the seats at that age. I don't recall the seats in the Almars I've messed with being anything too special.

I do recall blowing up 2, 460's in a new Almar before it was decided the factory heat exchanger wasn't suitable for the application. If that boats been sitting, be sure and go through the cooling system with a fine toothed comb, it proved to be Almar's short coming for me. Almar footed the bill for both my replacements, I'd imagine your warranty has expired.

Best of luck, sounds like the makings for a lot of great times..

Call Stevens marine in Portland. Talk to their Service manager for recommendation's for an upholstery shop specializing in marine upholstering repairs.

I would bet you could replace both seats with better suspension and coverings than the originals for less than double the cost of decent reupholstery.

+1

Find a boat upholstery shop. Ain’t cheap

Are the seat cushions removable?
Here`s the #1 upholsterer on the east coast.
It`s worth a call.
http://www.costamarinecanvas.com/

I had the bow of my boat done, 800.00 dollars

Thanks, I will give Stevens a ring.



The boat has been used a couple hours per year for the last five years. We put it on the lake yesterday and fired it up for first time in eight months. It took a minute or so of cranking for it to fire and run. But that is typical, I thought, for a thirty some year old carbureted engine.

It has a water dump valve on each exhaust manifold. They each started pouring water immediately.

There is a small antifreeze tank in front of the engine, and coolant hoses which run to the cabin heater. But there is no radiator, and I have not identified a heat exchanger yet, but I assume it must be there somewhere?

Idaho Marine over in Boise is a pretty decent shop. They might be able to steer me toward the proper upholstery shop. I know they would be darned happy to sell me seats.

We had a whole boat[ski] reupholstered by a local marine upholstery co several years back.
It was far better than the OEM upholstery.

It's this....might be what you are calling a anti-freeze tank...
There will not be a radiator.




Unbolt the caps off the ends and inspect the tubes.
Look at the tubes real well, they should be clean.
If it has ever sat for the winter without those caps pulled, They can freeze and split.

This is a cut-away view of the housing and end caps.








.

There is also going to be a drive-line of sorts between the engine and the jet unit. There should be a U-Joint or Two involved there, you might want to install fresh ones just due to age.



I'd replace every rubber hose involved with the cooling system right from the get-go, don't want to have one blow while you are out on the water.

Engine temperature will be one of your demons, over heating will cost you dearly.
Don't let it happen once!
Install the best temperature gauges you can find.

Oh yeah, sorry, this was about seats......lol

Shop new seats out online before you buy from a boat shop. Any seat should bolt to your air-ride bases..

+1

My overheating bills have been extremely painful...

Jeff, thank you very much for the advice. I do appreciate it.

I can not imagine much worse than engine troubles I the middle of a fast flowing river with rough water downstream. I want to do everything possible to avoid that scenario.

Anchoring in fast flowing water takes you straight to the bottom, you know that, right?

So have heard. A story made the rounds a few years ago about a guy and his young wife taking a new 24 foot Alumaweld out for its maiden voyage They were on the Columbia below Bonneville dam, probably as the tide was running out.

Anyhow, he released the anchor which was tied to the bow, and forgot the part about keeping a knife handy.

Fortunately another boat was fishing nearby and plucked the couple from the river. I do not even want to know what they had to pay for salvage operations and environmental impact.

I advise anchor rope 4 times water depth. I have anchored up in very swift water many many times. Shad rack below Bonneville, fishing in front of dams, free flowing stretch of the Columbia called the Hanford reach and a number of coastal rivers.


I have 400 ft of anchor rope on my boat.

Length means a lot when attempting to get an anchor to hold in moving waters but a sharp knife means everything when you find the water to be moving too fast once the hook sets.

Lets hope you have many happy days in your new boat, looks like it might be a great summer on water for you...

I'd imagine an auto upholstery shop could do it if you tell them to make sure to use marine materials. As someone else mentioned, you're probably in a bad area to find marine upholsterers, they're every couple of miles along the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida Gulf Coast around me. Marine upholstery, especially in the south, takes a beating unless the boat lives indoors most of the time.

I would opt for having it recovered instead of trying to buy new replacements. Most upholsterers will do a better job than came from the factory and use better materials. Boat manufacturers don't do their own, they farm it out to the cheapest bidder. I've had some done on my boat by a local guy and it's better than came from the factory. Hardly anyone down here tries to find new cushions, they have the old ones recovered.

If you can't find someone local I'd consider getting on the internet and find some shops in the Pensacola FL, Orange Beach or Mobile AL, Ocean Springs or Gulfport MS area that gets good reviews and call them for some quotes. The UPS shipping wouldn't be that much and they'd likely charge you half as much while doing a better job than someone in a high rent area like Seattle. Like anything else, high volume shops will usually do a better job at a lower price because of economies of scale. Boat upholstery shops down here get a lot of practice.

Somebody like these guys: http://www.peadenmarinecanvas.com/index.html

Note: I don't know a thing about them other than pulling them off of a quick google search so that's not an endorsement, but shops like this are all over the place down here and could certainly fix you up.

That fixes upholstery, but the guts are old...

Find a marine upholstery shop. If the boat is popular there may be skins ( I just bought a set for my Ski boat) but a good marine upholstery shop will be able to repair the frames replace, foam as needed as well as install new skins or fabricate from scratch. Cheap it ain't but I figure the first set lasted 20+ years, so one more run should about do it for me.

The first thing an upholstery shop does is replace the guts, all they need is the frame and that can be fixed too.

It ain't rocket surgery

He said he had air ride bases which means there are bucket seats bolted on to them.
Those bases might not even be original equipment let alone the seats.
Probably already been replaced at least once or twice in the 32 years this boat has been in use.


The bases are pretty spendy and the sky is the limit on what you want to spend on a 4 bolt bucket to perch on top of them.

It's not some custom wrap around bow rider type of interior, it's a bad azzed river jet boat with buckets so you don't get tossed out of them while pounding through rollers and rapids....

You can get decent buckets for a couple hundred each or even less, but then you could buy seats at a grand a pop if that's what turns your crank. Those bases will run you close to a grand each.

I wouldn't have them rebuilt unless I was after custom colors....I'd just pick up a couple fresh seats that fit my azz well.

The seats are "Trail Boss", and are the same seats equipped in tractor trailer rigs. They appear to be original equipment, further evidence is the dash clock says the boat has less than 1000 hours on it.

The seats are actually in pretty good shape except for the skins. They were originally stitched with a three inch quilted diamond pattern. The vinyl has ripped out along the stitch lines. But the foam is sound underneath.

I asked at the boat shop about cost for replacement of the seats, well over four grand.

But the boat shop recommended a local upholstery shop which they use all the time. I went over and talked to the shop owner. He has good heavy marine grade vinyl which is better than OEM. He can do both seats for $650, and is only two weeks out before he has an opening. And he has the color to match the boat, which is nice, if not critical.

So I think the issue is taken care of. I appreciate all the suggestions. I am headed out with four of the grandkids tomorrow to slay some crappie.