Re: 1961 Chris Craft Roamer Restoration by a 21 year old
As far as fixing the hull I dont think its that bad I think most of the damage was from water sitting in the bilge. I just want to fix it right if i'm going to do it so I would like to replace all the bad metal. I'll have to research what to coat the bilge with but it doesnt sound like a bad idea.
Sandblast it clean then check the thickness remaining. If it's too thin in places, cut out a square patch and use an english wheel or sandbags with dollies to form a patch to fit. Weld in place and sand flush. Steel is very, very repairable.
Spivy30 said:
As far as repowering i'm going to see how it goes with the orginal engines. They run good and were recently built. Down the road id like to put something like 310 or 330 cummings in it...maybe thats over kill.
Depends on what you're trying for. It's a displacement hull, IE it won't really plane (it will with something like 1000 horsepower, but even then it would be nearly uncontrollable). It has to do with the hull shape and weight.
Basically, unless a boat can plane, its speed is limited by a ratio of its beam to length and its hull shape. For your hull you can use the standard displacement formulas, a calculator for it is here, along with a pretty decent explanation of the formula:
http://www.solarnavigator.net/hull_speed.htm
On the bright side, to get the full displacement speed you don't need much power at all. The rough explanation here covers something of why:
http://everything2.com/title/hull+speed
Bottom line, unless you eventually put in a big enough engine to plane the boat (thus making it uncontrollable due to hull shape) then all having an engine bigger than the size needed for hull speed (42 hp by my math) does for you is uses more fuel and in some circumstances gets you an extra knot or two. It also gets you up to your full displacement speed faster (gives you faster acceleration). On the flip side, a small engine gets you really good fuel economy and corresponding range.
Now you know why the really big seagoing ships don't plane, and why they can go fast anyway... they're really long.
Don't think that a boat that goes 7-8 knots is bad.. a smaller engine means you can go 7-8 knots all day long to get where you're going, and it will cost you less in fuel than the planing boats use in an hour.
Erik
