When purchasing my VTX I opted for the the Monsoon from Indmar since, my previous boat had the Indmar 350 carburated engine in an I-drive Moomba Outback. Now I had the Moomba for 10 years with a seasonal replace battery,starter,shaft packing and pump the boat always started and had very few issues till year 9 when I had the carb rebuilt.
So now to my less that 25hr old Malibu that overheated all the time and had a surge in startup
to add to my issues. On my 6th launch( probably the boat's 10th) from the worst trailer ever built into my lake which is admittedly low. While throttling it off the trailer as described by a manufactures customer service rep. the boat overheat blinking screen of doom came on saying OVERHEAT. So I shut it off as I float off in to the middle of my lake waiting for the boat to cool down . Now to review the boat has overheated 3 other times and I mentioned it in the first service ticket to the dealer(where they claimed to have changed a sensor???) Now I go to the dealer and call Malibu Customer service where I was blessed to have the good fortune to talk with Stephanie J who
claimed in a second phone conversation with me where she says it was some how my fault and sides with my dealer who is telling me I must have destroyed my new boats pump. ( the Dealer says the same ) so I fold even knowing that I couldn't have, I play along. I get stuck buying it then pulling it and checking it on a new boat . This is like buying an new car and the dealer telling you to fix the water
pump(just not right) Well the the pictures tell the story(not an easy picture to get) looked like when they built the boat.((A must have is a inline sediment filter thankfully I am smarter than the dealer and had one installed it gets the grass algie before it gets in the engine and is in a clear cylinder so it can be visually checked quickly.)) We checked it as well a little sand nothing more.
Now, After a not so funny e-mail from my dealer I call them where the dealer sends one of his best techs to do a dock side repair. His tech arrives and looks into the over heating and a new problem a random popping(sounds like popcorn) when the boat gets warm not hot. First as I had told the dealer the 90degree elbo hardware on the exhaust was loose and could be the problem(note made of plastic and I believe will be an ongoing issue) and it was part of it. Then we plug in his pc and motor around for a while to recreate the popping noise and we do as well as check for overheating. The Tech spent 3 hrs on this and felt it was fixed and recorded the data from my boat popping to send to Indmar support.(I think they may want to switch to mac since the data collected on their pc was corrupted no help from Indmar)
Then my nephews arrive and of course they want to go on the boat not more than 10 minutes on the water it starts with the Doom notifications of overheating and add a new one which I
expected from the beginning ECU(electronic control unit)failure. Oddly the boat would be hard and at one point had to be tricked into restarting to allow me to get back to the dock. On one occasion in the same session the boat started ran and would have the screen flashing the above message.
Well as with everything on this boat it's a fight, I take my nephew and his friend with me to the dealer and discuss the issue and he then tells me well we as a industry have had many issues and a high failure rate with these MMDC
modules and it controls everything on the engine and gauges.
So he sends a tech out late on a saturday to his credit and they replace the module and feel they have it right. Except now apparently a missing gasket on the afore mentioned filter may cause more problems. I found the missing gasket and wasn't sure where it came from but later installed it as instructed by the dealer.
After 4 weeks of this I'm happy to report the boat seems to run great still a little uneasy about the throttle surge at start up. Once again the dealer says that's normal but the last time I started any of my cars none of them surge up and down.
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