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New Problems - Near Electrical Fire

Vikingstaff said:
Totally got lucky (although I am not sure my wife feels that way, lol). Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get a call when I had my name added to the wait list.

But onto your situation. Ordered last August…? And still not in? Yikes!!! What’s up with that? I am sorry to hear you are still waiting on them. What make and models do you have on order Yianni?
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We ordered Yamaha VX Limited Wave Runners. The dealer feels bad but there is nothing he can do. He said Yamaha has cancelled 8 of their orders. I called Yamaha and they said if I haven't received notice my order has been cancelled, then they are coming.
The problem now is when they get here they'll be a model year old. The dilemma is do I cancel the order and order 2022's? It may still be bad next year so I'm leaning to just take them and call it done.
 
Vikingstaff said:
Update:

Took the dealership a month to take their first look at it. They gave it an initial inspection about a week ago. They are very backlogged on work due to boom in sales.

They can not definitively determine the cause yet, so could go any number of ways: warranty, dealership insurance or my insurance depending on cause. If cause cannot be definitively determined, then it’ll fall back on my insurance. Both the dealership and my insurance claims aduster said often in this sort of electrical meltdown or near-fire situations the main cause cannot be determined because it in effect was melted/burnt away during the incident.

Anyway, they got pre-approval from my insurance adjuster (in case it ends up there) to take off sea legs and underskirting to look over entire electrical harness, and all other wiring systems. If isolated to main harness and related wiring, estimate is somewhere around 4-5k. No time frame yet on parts availability.

I was told they will need to minimally replace the main electrical harness and some other related electrical items to then run power trough the system to check other things such as fuses, instrumentation, motor, Perko switch, sea legs, etc…. Hopefully little or no other damage is in those ares, but we’ll see.

We will hopefully have the first stage examined thoroughly by the end of this upcoming week leading into the July 4th holiday. By the week after that we will hopefully know what direction the ”claim” is going in depending on the cause (if they can fully determine it). Ideally we’ll also have a repair time estimate at that point too.

So nothing definitive yet. I was originally going to wait on an update until I knew more. Still may be a week or so on getting to that point.

In Related News:

I had put myself on some waiting lists with a few dealership for a new PWC shortly after this happened in May. Everyone in the state is sold out for the season on new ones, but I got on some waiting lists in case someone declines their order when it comes in.

This past Tuesday I was informed a couple that placed an order 3-4 months ago for a 2021 Sea Doo GTI SE 170 w/ sound decided not to accept their order when it arrived. The 3 people ahead of me on the wait list turned it down. After looking into that model a bit, and working to get my wife on board, we decided to get it. I‘m super excited about it!

I was able to find a new jet ski lift at another dealerships and got it delivered Saturday (I put it in today). We were also able to find a 1 year old 2020 single place Yacht Club trailer (painted black) at the dealerships that someone had just traded in for a two place trailer.

Thus, we are 100% squared away for getting the new jet ski!

Due to a backlog of prepping new orders at our dealership, the jet ski is scheduled to be ready for pickup on Monday, July 5th. Very excited!

Stock photo of jet ski as well as our lift are below:

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Congrats on the ski! The GTI is a great platform. I had an '08 GTI SE 155 for about 10 years. Never had an issue. Changed oil and spark plugs every year and that was it. Enjoy it!
 
Yianni said:
We ordered Yamaha VX Limited Wave Runners. The dealer feels bad but there is nothing he can do. He said Yamaha has cancelled 8 of their orders. I called Yamaha and they said if I haven't received notice my order has been cancelled, then they are coming.
The problem now is when they get here they'll be a model year old. The dilemma is do I cancel the order and order 2022's? It may still be bad next year so I'm leaning to just take them and call it done.
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That is a tricky decision. If they don‘t come in soon, I’d be tempted to take the chance and reorder for 2022. I certianly don’t like losing an entire year of no use on a band new item. I am struggling with that likelihood now with the Bennington with it’s electrical repair situation. But then again, I wouldn’t want to risk the same situation if you reorder. I hear many manufacturers are already filling up a lot of 2022 orders because 2021’s sold out so quickly.

I hope they show up soon for you to help make the decisions for keeping them easier!!!
 
Another Update: As of yesterday, my Sea Legs have still not been removed from my boat so that the dealership can take off the under-skirting to fully diagnose the extent of electrical damage. The dealership has now had my boat for 7 weeks. Yes, 7 weeks. They are absolutely no further in the process than I was dockside at the time of the incident. Getting….increasingly….angry over this situation.
 
I'm sorry to hear the about the lack of news. I'm assuming you got the jet ski to make things slightly better? Hopefully you get some news soon. Is trading an option or will they not want to do anything until it's fixed? I know trading doesn't help this year, but might make you feel better.
 
OMG Vikingstaff. That is a horrible bunch of events. So sorry you have gone through all this crap. Hopefully you get some positive resolution soon
 
Lay Lake said:
I'm sorry to hear the about the lack of news. I'm assuming you got the jet ski to make things slightly better? Hopefully you get some news soon. Is trading an option or will they not want to do anything until it's fixed?
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Jet ski was TOTALLY a result of this situation. Ha, ha. I have wanted one since we got the lake house, but other things were always prioritized above it. And anyway, in the summer we had the Bennington, so it was easy to push off. With the Benny down in this manner, and a huge stroke of luck on a recent canceled order that arrived at our local dealership, my wife reluctantly gave the green light to snag it. Super happy so far!

I did consider this possibility. As a matter of fact, VERY closely looked into it for a couple weeks in June. If I sold it after getting it back, or did a dealership trade in, I am confident in getting a good return on it. However, the price has went up so much since ordering ours in 2017, that it is very hard to justify paying that much more than we did to even get the same spec’d out boat (let alone a step up).

It would probably require us to look at a different manufacturer, and I’d rather not. I otherwise love our Bennington, and was very under-whelmed with most other pontoon manufacturers back in 2016-17 when I was looking across all manufacturers for a tritoon.

Currently I am frustrated with the absolute lack of ANY concrete progress in 7 weeks on our dealership and Sea Legs part. Literally none. My wife keeps reminding me the expectation was the boat would likely be out of service for the season. However, it’s hard to rectify when you know they can build an entire boat in less than a week, and diagnosing and repairing this problem should take 2-3 says (+parts deliver time) if they would/could have 1-2 technicians just focus in on it.
 
I agree with you on your frustration in the length of time. Most of us have had a situation similar, but knowing others have been through it doesn't make it any easier. The good thing about trading is that you have a trade. You could be looking at buying for the first time with the prices skyrocketing.

I'm sure they will have your boat as good as new for next year... if that helps any.
 
Vikingstaff said:
Jet ski was TOTALLY a result of this situation. Ha, ha. I have wanted one since we got the lake house, but other things were always prioritized above it. And anyway, in the summer we had the Bennington, so it was easy to push off. With the Benny down in this manner, and a huge stroke of luck on a recent canceled order that arrived at our local dealership, my wife reluctantly gave the green light to snag it. Super happy so far!

I did consider this possibility. As a matter of fact, VERY closely looked into it for a couple weeks in June. If I sold it after getting it back, or did a dealership trade in, I am confident in getting a good return on it. However, the price has went up so much since ordering ours in 2017, that it is very hard to justify paying that much more than we did to even get the same spec’d out boat (let alone a step up).

It would probably require us to look at a different manufacturer, and I’d rather not. I otherwise love our Bennington, and was very under-whelmed with most other pontoon manufacturers back in 2016-17 when I was looking across all manufacturers for a tritoon.

Currently I am frustrated with the absolute lack of ANY concrete progress in 7 weeks on our dealership and Sea Legs part. Literally none. My wife keeps reminding me the expectation was the boat would likely be out of service for the season. However, it’s hard to rectify when you know they can build an entire boat in less than a week, and diagnosing and repairing this problem should take 2-3 says (+parts deliver time) if they would/could have 1-2 technicians just focus in on it.
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Oh oh sounds like a PADS infection.....
 
Yea, I cannot afford PADS now that I am a retired man. Ha, ha. Lay Lake, you are right. By next year I will be as good as new, and it’s a matter of exercising some patience. I guess on the bright side it led to us pulling the trigger on getting a jet ski. That is at least nice.

I’d have less issues if it was just taking forever to get parts, and what not. The part that is killing me is them having it for 7 weeks and not being able to even take apart some basic things (Sea Legs and under skirting) to complete diagnosing the extent of the damage. That is the part really rubbing me the wrong way.

But in the end, nothing I can do about that except complain to them once a week…ha! Happy boating everyone. Someday I hope to update what the actual cause was…if they can find it.
 
There is a fine line between annoying the dealership and getting them going, but remember "the squeaky wheel gets greased".
 
Latest update: Labor Day.

Main electrical harness and some other various wires, parts and another set of new batteries have come in these past 2 weeks. They are still waiting on the main fuse box and an RGB electrical harness. No ETA on those two items. They don’t have any expectation of getting them anytime soon.

Dealer service rep said once they get those two items, they can put the electrical system back together and run power through it. At that point, they will then be able to test everything else that has electricity run through it to see if anything else is damaged. I’d image there will be a few things, but who knows for sure until they get to that point. And that will likely then become another waiting game on parts…

Missed the entire summer. The question now is will they have everything before winter or not and what that means for storage (normally I pay my dealership for indoor winter storage, so they already have it now) and getting the boat back next spring.

Part of me is hoping they don’t get things before winter at this point and have to “store” my boat for FREE since it had technically been in for service since May, and in their hands prior to that since Oct. 2020 due to them winterizing and storing the boat.

However, my fear is they don’t get these last two items until late winter, test everything early spring. Find other related electrical issues AND we then lose some, most or all of next summer too because of parts shortages on whatever else they diagnose as compromised or damaged.

Hopefully I will have another update sometime soon with other parts in, and them able to try to figure out if ANYTHING ELSE is damaged. I am just praying for full usage in 2022 after the end of 2020 with the pontoons, and this entire season with the electrical system burn out.
 
Good Luck Jeff . I have a boat and a vehicle ordered, parts shortages are causing delays for both .
 
Viking - I'll do my part with the supply chain issues and hold off on buying my next one until you get your issues worked out!

But hopefully they find the source of the issues as well, that would be beyond painful if they wired the boat all back up and it happened again. I'd probably turn it into an offshore reef, collect the insurance payout and buy another Sea Doo!
 
Vikingstaff said:
Jet ski was TOTALLY a result of this situation.
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Expect you have more than the 10 break-in hours on the SeaDoo 170 by now and have figured out the geewhiz techno stuff. With break-in complete the computer will let you have full performance. Great fun, huh? Has the wife suggested getting one for her yet?

Anyway, sorry this summer is slipping away for your best boating.
 
Yup. Knocked down that break in period pretty fast on the Sea Doo. I love it! However, haven‘t been able to spend as much time as we normally would at the cottage this past month. Lots happening around home.

It will be nice when we have both the Benny and the Sea Doo to play around with next summer.
 
Late Oct. Update: Dealership has had the boat for 5+ months now. Down to waiting on two parts: Main RGB electrical harness and fuse box.

Bennington sent the wrong harness and fuse box about 5 weeks ago, and now we are waiting on the correct two being sent to my dealership. All other parts have been received. No ETA on harness and fuse box as they are a mystery somewhere in the supply chain per Bennington.

One small bright spot: Dealership took care of winterization at no charge for me given the 5+ months the boat has been in their possession awaiting extensive repairs.
 
Vikingstaff said:
Late Oct. Update: Dealership has had the boat for 5+ months now. Down to waiting on two parts: Main RGB electrical harness and fuse box.

Bennington sent the wrong harness and fuse box about 5 weeks ago, and now we are waiting on the correct two being sent to my dealership. All other parts have been received. No ETA on harness and fuse box as they are a mystery somewhere in the supply chain per Bennington.

One small bright spot: Dealership took care of winterization at no charge for me given the 5+ months the boat has been in their possession awaiting extensive repairs.
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Hopefully they'll finish by next season!
 
I’d hope they get the parts in the next 7-8 months before it’s boating season in Michigan again.
 
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