Photo: eBay User: boatangelministries
A good portion of our audience doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about boats. But Barn finds are arguably what everyone around here loves more than anything else. So when we found a venerable pocket rocket of a 1962 Crusers Inc 202-V runabout just chilling in a shed in Front Royal, Virginia, we knew it was a better time than ever to introduce the floating and diving side of our reader base to the petrolheads. Come one, come all! We even bought Coronas and one of those grocery store cakes no one ever truly enjoys.
Jokes aside, it's pretty rare that we find a vehicle not on two or four wheels shoved into a barn come across our desks. But it's safe to say this little 202-V is the perfect change of pace to make it worth our while. Known today as Cruisers Yachts, Cruisers Inc. is one of America's longest-standing personal watercraft manufacturers. Founded out of Wisconsin in 1953, the company was one of the last large-scale boat manufacturers to buck the trend of fiberglass in favor of more traditional wooden hulls for their boats even into the mid-1960s.
It's this delightful assortment of stretch-bonded wood that makes up most of the construction behind this 16-footer runabout before us. At least based on the provided photos, this Cruisers Inc. hull seems to have benefited nicely from spending the past few decades away from the elements. The one downside of not adopting fiberglass in its design is any prolonged exposure to moisture could compromise the wooden hull, making it essentially worth its weight in rotten timber. But with its two-tone red-on-white paint job still pretty much intact and stunning red-vinyl interior still looking wicked, there's nothing but potential sitting before us for whoever's brave enough to try and fix it up.
But there's the problem, there's quite a bit of fixing up to do. You see, this boat's spent every day since 1991 cooped up in this shed. It's also completely unclear whether the single 75-horsepower Johnson outboard motor or the 4.2-horsepower Champion troller motor is in working order or not. It's possible that one or both of these engines are either seized, damaged, or otherwise compromised to the point they need replacing. That's at the very least a $4,500 proposition if the whole engine needs replacing and roughly another 300 for the troller motor, without even taking labor into account.
And as they say, when you're dealing with restoring old boats, and something goes wrong, you might as well throw on another $1000 to whatever total you had in your head. Before long, you might even be drowning in more debt from this project than the river or lake you'd ride this boat around over. Still, after selling for just $1,225 recently, it's not like the initial investment is going to break the bank. There is plenty of room left in the budget for a new engine.
It's this delightful assortment of stretch-bonded wood that makes up most of the construction behind this 16-footer runabout before us. At least based on the provided photos, this Cruisers Inc. hull seems to have benefited nicely from spending the past few decades away from the elements. The one downside of not adopting fiberglass in its design is any prolonged exposure to moisture could compromise the wooden hull, making it essentially worth its weight in rotten timber. But with its two-tone red-on-white paint job still pretty much intact and stunning red-vinyl interior still looking wicked, there's nothing but potential sitting before us for whoever's brave enough to try and fix it up.
But there's the problem, there's quite a bit of fixing up to do. You see, this boat's spent every day since 1991 cooped up in this shed. It's also completely unclear whether the single 75-horsepower Johnson outboard motor or the 4.2-horsepower Champion troller motor is in working order or not. It's possible that one or both of these engines are either seized, damaged, or otherwise compromised to the point they need replacing. That's at the very least a $4,500 proposition if the whole engine needs replacing and roughly another 300 for the troller motor, without even taking labor into account.
And as they say, when you're dealing with restoring old boats, and something goes wrong, you might as well throw on another $1000 to whatever total you had in your head. Before long, you might even be drowning in more debt from this project than the river or lake you'd ride this boat around over. Still, after selling for just $1,225 recently, it's not like the initial investment is going to break the bank. There is plenty of room left in the budget for a new engine.
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