Ouachita Marine Services

Excellent service! Cannot beat tom and jeff.

If I rated them on being kind then it would be a five but as for the service / repair I am extremely disappointed. I called and gave a detailed description of my issue. I drove 4 hours to leave the boat there as I planned on coming back and staying the weekend after it was fixed. The boat would run but would get extremely weak. I had already had a compression test, which was great, and carb rebuild but the boat would still run good then bog down. I described this to them, even stating that I unhooked one of the spark plug wires when it was in the bog stage, and it made no difference in running characteristic. The person on the phone acted as if he knew what was wrong, hinting it was likely carbs, which I found unusual since they were just rebuilt less than a year prior. After having the boat a few days, he called saying it was fixed but thought the stock fuel pump was shoddy and recommended replacing it. Price was around $100 for the part. I went ahead and had them do it. Upon picking up the boat and paying over $600, we immediately put it on the water, and it was in bog mode immediately. It would barely pull itself off the trailer, even though it was mostly floating. I pulled it to shore and called them. They were literally 200 yards away and the mechanic came down. He stated they tested it on the water, but I had my doubts since I had a cover on the boat which went from front to rear and was tied down in 12 locations to the trailer. The only part that was uncovered was from back to the wheel. I had the tarp arched up with PVC pipe and also had a piece propped up in a manner to make sure it did not get in their way. The cover would have had to come completely off just to put the boat in the water. If they did in fact do this, they did a great job of getting the straps back exactly like I had them, including the precariously propped up piece under the tarp. The mechanic and I took it on the water, and he messed with the timing. The timing would have had to been off quite a bit to cause this and would have to be moving on its own quite freely to be so intermittent. He adjusted once and it seem to run normal but then went into bog mode again within seconds. He did this a couple times until it ran without issue back to shore. I felt he was never confident that what he had done was the fix. I mentioned how removing a plug wire made no difference in its running characteristic and he said it was probably the power pack. During the next two days the boat did not seem to have issues but then bogged again as we were about to put it on the trailer. I took it home and started troubleshooting myself. I replaced the power pack, which the mechanic had stated could be the issue. The boat still bogged. I decided to unplug the power pack and put the old one back on but then noticed one of the pins on the plug attached to the motor, was pushed all the way back into the plug boot. On the power pack side, the rubber on the plug, right next to where the pin is supposed to insert, had a divot where the tip of the pin in the other plug was poking into it, only lightly touching the edge of the female terminal. The whole time the pin was pushed back into the boot and was making intermittent contact. I pull the pin and wire through the boot and plugged the pin in manually and then worked the plug back together. Put the boat on water and it ran perfect. Too late to make a long story short but, unnecessary work done for a bloated price of $600 plus, and a problem I ended up solving on my own. I think the information was there for them to know where to troubleshoot, when I stated the plug wire removed made no difference in how the engine ran. They chose to go with carburetor and fuel pump instead. I do appreciate that they took my boat in and attempted to fix it but feel like they really just chose to do something and charge me for it.

Lake Ouachita's and area best Marine !

Very reasonable, especially for it's location. I always use them to winterize and change the oil in my boat. A hell of a lot better and cheaper than Bradford marine.

I will never use Ouachita marine services. After doing winterization services, they left my power unit down and left my batteries on and drained them. I was told that it may have saved me from a breakdown on the water. Never apologizing for me having to change out batteries during a holiday weekend with friends. What kind of service is that? Had an attitude when I called to complain.