Re: 1971 17' Invader Tri-Hull Restoration, The Madness Begins
I wanted to put this out there to possibly help someone someday. When we first started talking about overhauling the boat, I thought to myself, "I'm not even real sure what the interior of the boat is even suppose to look like". I searched the net and couldn't find much other than the information that is here on iboats. Very few pictures, very little information on the boat itself.
I forget who it was now, but I read a post early on, and the man was a genus. He had pretty much a complete history of Invader Boats. I believe it was Roscoe come to think of it and he explained the three letter manufacturer's code and how the company had changed over the years.
Where there were several manufacturing locations at one time for Invader Boats scattered across the country, there has to be several of these boats which are still very sea worthy vessels. Hopefully this is to help someone considering repairing an Invader which is not so sea worthy.
You see, all I had was a Bill of Sale; not even a Title so I had no idea of even where it was manufactured. Since then I have gotten registration information from the last state it was registered in and sent for a lost title on the trailer, but I will leave that for another post as that was an experience in itself.
One of the things I had missed early on was the transom and its rotted condition. I thought I might add some things one should look at when inspecting a boat or looking at buying a used boat.
At the stern of the boat, the hull cap is about 20" deep on this model and houses the battery on the starboard side and there was a storage compartment on the port side which also hosed the blower motor to exhaust fuel vapors out of the engine compartment. Neither was real accessible to the back to inspect the transom, but when the engine cover was raised, the transom was a little easier to look at.
So this is my spiel for this post:
Notice there are lines in the glass which run vertically along either side of the transom plate. The transom had been recovered with glass and what looks like latex paint at one time, I'm sure to clean it up and refresh the stern prior to sale by someone that specialized in cosmetics and not fixing anything.
I am pretty sure there are unscrupulous dealers out there even in the boating industry.
As I said earlier, I accidentally pulled a hunk of transom loose while pulling out the last piece of port side flooring. That is the hole in the lower left hand corner. It had appeared solid back in the dark of the storage compartment.
Here's a closer look at the inside of the boat with the engine and transom plate removed.
While I am by no means a boat expert, what was going on with the cracks was the result stress from the vibration on the engine the last few years it ran. With the rotten wood behind the glass, there was no structure left. These should have been telltale signs of bigger hidden problems.
You can always use a technique we in Aviation call a "Sonic Tap Test" to find defects in bonded assemblies and you can tell where the discrepant area starts and where it ends within thousands of an inch always, just by listening. I inspect parts aircraft parts daily using this method.
lane:
