May 25

May 25 Can This Scarab Sprint Run Again?

If there is one thing I miss about boats from the nineties it is that there were quite a few neat little affordable sport boats. You could find sub 18 foot boats in stern drive or outboard configuration that were family friendly, affordable and looked cool. Nowadays it seems like there aren’t any sporty boats from mainstream manufacturers anymore that small. In the nineties though there were plenty and Scarab had some cool little boats back in the day. Here’s a 1994 Scarab Sprint for sale. Is it worth fixing up?

The Scarab Sprint I believe started life as a 16’ in the late eighties at Team Scarab in California and they used jet drives, with some boats sold to Universal Studios for gimmicks at the theme parks. For the consumer version, the boats were a little bigger at 18’11” overall and a 7’ beam with a 20 degree deadrise. A very rare version with a 4.3 V6 and a Scarab designed jet pump. I believe the pump was manufactured by Volvo but I could have that wrong. Sterndrive versions with the 3.0L MerCruiser were offered, only being slightly slower than the V6 jet. The sterndrive one is the one to get for me, I really don’t like jets, they are just too slow and inefficient.

Some Scarab Sprints came with jets but I’d take the stern drive all day, way faster. I think some had a small pad, this doesn’t appear to have one.

Can the one in this advertisement make sense to bring back to life. At first glance it looks pretty decent in that cosmetically at least it looks salvageable. If that’s the case, then you could spend your time making sure it is structurally sound and know that you don't’ have to repaint it completely. Assume the floors, and any wood is rotten. You could easily do the interior on the cheap, many marine retail outlets have good bucket seats for really good deals.

Where it will get expensive is any fiberglass work and the engine and drive I would presume to be toast so count on replacing / repairing everything. This trailer looks completely salvageable and might need just some minor refurbishment. You can probably get remanufactured 3.0L MerCruiser engines for about $3k to $4k, and a rebuilt Alpha drive for a reasonable amount, or a 4.3 V6 if you wanted to go all out. You could refresh what is there already to save some money.

The dash could use a little cleaning up. Not horrific though.

These boats have a cool dash layout and I would probably remove the dash panel and just paint it and slide in some inexpensive gauges. You can find gauge kits that look great for very reasonable prices.

Another trick if the boat is looking faded or the graphics are in rough shape is to remove them, wet sand and polish the boat and apply new Vinyl graphics. There are cheap premade graphics from companies or you could get some custom made too. They look great and are very durable. But if the existing stuff looks 7/10, then it might be worth it to just clean up what is already there.

Cosmetically this one doesn’t look too bad. I always think it’s smart if you can salvage what is already there with a good polish and detail. Adding vinyl graphics is a good way to freshen it up an make it new again.

Keep in mind, this was an affordable little boat built in the nineties, the quality is not the best and materials were limited. Most boats from this era will need structural work. For a small boat, it is not a rocket but with a super economical 3.0L 4 cylinder, the 135 HP should get it close to 50 MPH and a V6 4.3 225 closer to 60 MPH. I think this boat looks really cool and there isn’t really anything like it on the market now. As for the price, I think you’d have to get it for a bit of a discount on the asking to make it worth it. You will have to put some money in it but you would have a really cool boat.