Best Of

My review after a few weeks living with the accumulator: love it!  It's a simple mod that makes a noticeable difference.  

There's a easy trick to tune the system for best performance.  All you need is an air pump to adjust the air pressure in the bladder.

1) Disable the accumulator by letting all air out of the bladder.  

2) Turn on a faucet at a slow rate so the water pump starts cycling on and off every 2-3 seconds.

3) Count off the time interval between pump cycles.

4) Start adding air pressure to the bladder a little at a time.  The time interval between pump cycles will start to increase.

5) Eventually, when the air pressure in the bladder gets too high, the time interval will start to get shorter.  

6) The best air pressure is when you have the longest interval between pump cycles.

Time for an update! I ended up buying the SEI 2.20 outdrive and Sola props. Then last Thursday my dock mates reported some thugs on my dock with magnets "looking for lost keys". They were forced to leave the dock but tipped us off to the fact that they were looking for the outdrive in 13 feet of water. YES - they dropped the outdrive into the water when removing it from my boat. 3 months later they returned in broad daylight to look for it. That night I went to the dock and found a rope tied off to my dock. We traced the rope under a few slips to the outdrive. We could pull it up enough to see it was in fact our outdrive. Since we couldn't pull it out of the water we moved the rope to a new spot well hidden from the pirates. Then we tied a new rope with a fringed end to where they had tied off before. We left the dock at 2:30am planning to come back in the morning with more muscle. First thing this next day we towed the boat to the marina, the pipe plug in the outdrive hole worked perfectly. That night between 2:30am and 8:00am they returned to find the cut off rope. There was a lot of wet docks so we can see they went swimming for the outdrive. They left empty handed. We pulled the outdrive from the water and took it to the marina. The drive was still sealed with no water intrusion. We cleaned it and installed it on the boat. All works perfectly. We returned the SEI outdrive for a 10% restocking fee, and the Props were returned for the cost of shipping. We are now storing the boat at the Marina to avoid another event like this. I appreciate everyone's support and advice throughout this ordeal. Now we have good photos of the pirates, We know the exact marina where they are living and the sheriff and water patrol are in process of evicting them and confiscating the boats and RVs they have been living on. There pirates have been robbing the docks and boats around Bethel Island for many years. Soon enough they will move down the river to continue doing what they do.