Help Needed..two 25xs Engines Stolen!

[Jeff Brewster 59s]

Gene Noonan (50-S) from Dayton, Ohio called this evening and needs our help. Both of his stock 25xs were stolen out of his garage early Saturday morning. A neighbor witnessed three men load up their pickup in his driveway. Most of his tools and some toys were taken also. Luckily the rest of his motors, boats and equipment were still in his enclosed trailer in the driveway and was not touched. If you see or hear of anyone trying to sell this type of engine and it appears odd, please let us know.
Call Gene at 937-253-6511 or 937-256-1661 or myself via email at jeffbrew59s@aol.com

p.s. do you have your engine serial numbers recorded in case this happens? Gene didnt and neither do I. But, I will tomorrow! Just a suggestion for us all.

[HRTV]

Wow! sorry to hear about this, we should all keep an eye on Ebay thats where they might show up.

[Andrew 4CE]

That sucks!

Stealing is bad enough, but stealing race equipment I can never figure out. I mean it hits the people right in the pocket as race stuff is rarely insured. Plus racing communities are so close knit it's bound to turn up sooner or later...

Good luck hunting down the trash who took em!

[Boomtap15F]

s*** bags

that's horrible, what kind of low life ya know? please let me know if you find the people that did this, then i can help

[DougMc]

Insurance and Locksmith

I know how tough that is. My house was broke into last year while I was at Winter Nationals in Ocoee. There was no sign of entry. Check your home owners insurance. If the motors and tools were in your garage they may be covered by insurance, depending on your policy.

Also, if they came in through the garage and you have an electronic door opener, they most likely opened with a CB radio/walkie talkie. If you leave your door open a lot, they may have driven by and copied your door code with an opener. If you don't use the garage for your car, you may want to disconnect the opener.

Make sure your dead bolts close all the way into the door frame, if not they can be opened with a screw driver or credit card. You may want to have a locksmith come to your house and evaluate your locks and security set up. That is what I did after I was broke into. He had me lock each door and window as I usually did and he stayed outside. It took less than 15 seconds for the locksmith to break into my house with out a trace.

[sponsonhead]

Been there!

Sorry to hear about this one. Having been in that situation before, I know exactly how you feel.

We still haven't seen our stolen 302 and it's been gone nearly 2 years (serial number 1518, in case anyone runs across it).

I came to the conclusion that it was probably melted down and used for some loser's Meth lab production. Apparently aluminum is a part of the Meth cooking process, and what a better way to get a reasonably portable 100 lb chunk of aluminum to melt down than an outboard motor? If the creeps are brazen enough to steel the aluminum guard rails off the interstate, than an outboard motor is a cakewalk. So, my guess is that it's long gone and was cremated in someone's crack pipe who will hopefully rot in hell.

Adding insult to injury, my homeowners' insurance at the time would not cover the theft because the engine was in someone else's trailer at the time and not on my property. Having learned the hard way on that one, I fired that insurance agent, hired another, and got insurance coverage on all of our boat racing equipment against fire and theft, just in case that should ever happen again. Come to find out that getting that sort of insurance is really reasonable, cost-wise....so much so that it didn't make sense not to get it. Guess I should have started dating an insurance agent a long time ago

R-19

[Dave M]

To Bad

Sorry to hear about this one. Having been in that situation before, I know exactly how you feel.

We still haven't seen our stolen 302 and it's been gone nearly 2 years (serial number 1518, in case anyone runs across it).

I came to the conclusion that it was probably melted down and used for some loser's Meth lab production. Apparently aluminum is a part of the Meth cooking process, and what a better way to get a reasonably portable 100 lb chunk of aluminum to melt down than an outboard motor? If the creeps are brazen enough to steel the aluminum guard rails off the interstate, than an outboard motor is a cakewalk. So, my guess is that it's long gone and was cremated in someone's crack pipe who will hopefully rot in hell.

Adding insult to injury, my homeowners' insurance at the time would not cover the theft because the engine was in someone else's trailer at the time and not on my property. Having learned the hard way on that one, I fired that insurance agent, hired another, and got insurance coverage on all of our boat racing equipment against fire and theft, just in case that should ever happen again. Come to find out that getting that sort of insurance is really reasonable, cost-wise....so much so that it didn't make sense not to get it. Guess I should have started dating an insurance agent a long time ago

R-19

I was talking with Gene last night and this morning, they did manage to get a partial liscence plate number on the van or pickup. His neighbors called the police whom had they arrived 3 minutes sooner would have caught them in the dirty deed. Sad thing is, the 25XS is almost impossible to replace, in the condition they are raced. So much more than book value is put into a race engine......

Apparently the police found the owner of the van and questioned him, he reported the van stolen that morning, so our guess is the creep figured out he was seen and reported his vehicle stolen to cover his butt. He recovered it later that day on his own I guess.......... Hopefully the three fingerprints they got at the scene will nail him.

I doubt these engines will surface soon, as all the local marinas were notified. Not hard to identify a race only engine, especially a 25 stocker.

Gene did have the serial number to one engine, but not the other one.

Pat, can you share your insurance agent and policy for your race equipment ? Some others might benefit from this.

[greybeard]

Possible tax write off

I trashed a new 25ss runabout at lock haven in 1974, put it in a dumpster when I got home. I wasn't coverered by insurance but I was able to write it off as a "loss not covered by insurance" on my federal return. Check with your tax preparer. You can't replace the irreplaceable, but this may help with the $ side of it.

[sponsonhead]

Pat, can you share your insurance agent and policy for your race equipment ? Some others might benefit from this.

Dave, my agent's name is Christine Elliott, of Elliott Insurance Group in Tacoma. She's an independent insurance agent, and my Homeowner's policy is thru Allied Insurance, a Nationwide company. Unfortunately, she can't do business outside of Washington state, but you could probably find an Allied agent in your neck of the woods. This is what she told me about my coverage:

"Your insurance company considers your racing equipment to be Personal Property (coverage C on a homeowner's policy.) It is strictly sporting equipment used for hobby-type pursuits. As such, it is covered for theft just like your stuff in your apartment or some fancy-schmancy bicycle you might own.

"There are several problems that could cause it NOT to be covered: if there is any income generated from the equipment if there are internal limits in the policy on sporting equipment if there is an exclusion for property used for racing events

"In your case, there is no coverage if you crash, but there is coverage for when the stuff is sitting in the trailer, or next to the trailer for fire, theft, vandalism, etc.

"I would advise your friends to check with their insurance agents to find out if there have any of the limitations I mentioned, and if, in the specific instance that their equipment is stolen at their residence or AWAY FROM their residence, is it covered? I think that it would be by most policies in Washington, at least."

She went on to explain that the cost wasn't really an issue since there was a blanket amount of coverage on my Homeowner's policy to cover all my stuff, which happened to include the value of my racing inventory.

So, the recommendation I would make would be for folks to 1) find out the amount of their Homeowners or Renter's insurance coverage, and make sure that it includes enough to cover the value of your racing equipment; if not, increase your coverage. and 2) check with your agent to make sure that your stuff is covered whether it's in your driveway, somebody else's driveway, a race site, or wherever it happens to be parked should the bad guys show up.

And, if you're in Washington, give Christine a call for an insurance quote....

R-19

[Steve Johnson]

Insurance

My wifes advice,(She is an Indepedent agent also) is Photograph and have an appraisal as to replacement cost.lol I'm not sure I want here to know just how much stuff I have collected over the years. Home owners should cover things but The burden of proof lies with the claimant.
Sorry about your loss Gene, Hope you can recover it and bring those criminals to justice. If ya catch em , us MN boys know how to handle them
Steve

[STEVE FRENCH]

Gene,
Sorry to hear your loss.
Will be watching for the motors to surface.
If you get a settlement, give Gottschalk a call. I was interested in a 25xs motor he had. I'm going to pass since no interest in stuff I was selling. I have his contact info if needed.

19P

hydroracer19p@yahoo.com