bugelingkayaker
Seaman Apprentice
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2019
- Messages
- 49
Figured I’d share what I’ve been up to. Scored a free bonito with a 1973 merc 850 on the back of it. Unfortunately it had been left outside uncovered for a year through multiple hurricanes here in Florida so it looked to be in rough shape (hence the free). After taking a close look at it though I felt pretty confident there was no catastrophic damage so we did some paperwork and I took it home. I’ll let the pictures tell some of the story but in short here’s what I had to do:
-replace wiring for tilt and trim motor and switch. Was able to salvage old switch after some heavy cleaning removing corrosion
-opened up tilt and trim motor to replace brushes and remove carbon build up
-almost total rebuild of motor (which still isn’t running perfect yet, hopefully fixed soon
) replace water pump and impeller, carburetor rebuild with new gaskets and needles, new wiring to starter motor and replacement of some other particularly bad sections
-heavy cleaning to remove years worth of dirt debris and literal animal feces
took out rotten deck which had been added later and built a new raised deck with added compartment storage. This is the main part I photo documented so here are the pics of that process.
for the veteran boaters out there you might wonder why on earth I went with so much plywood and adding so much weight. The main reason was that I wanted to do this without drilling any holes into the boat. I could have made it a lot lighter if I had been willing to drill into the hull but I wanted to make sure this deck was entirely removable without damaging anything if I later decided to sell the boat. So here’s the pics:
edit: well i would show you if the darn pictures will upload.. working on it
-replace wiring for tilt and trim motor and switch. Was able to salvage old switch after some heavy cleaning removing corrosion
-opened up tilt and trim motor to replace brushes and remove carbon build up
-almost total rebuild of motor (which still isn’t running perfect yet, hopefully fixed soon
) replace water pump and impeller, carburetor rebuild with new gaskets and needles, new wiring to starter motor and replacement of some other particularly bad sections-heavy cleaning to remove years worth of dirt debris and literal animal feces
took out rotten deck which had been added later and built a new raised deck with added compartment storage. This is the main part I photo documented so here are the pics of that process.
for the veteran boaters out there you might wonder why on earth I went with so much plywood and adding so much weight. The main reason was that I wanted to do this without drilling any holes into the boat. I could have made it a lot lighter if I had been willing to drill into the hull but I wanted to make sure this deck was entirely removable without damaging anything if I later decided to sell the boat. So here’s the pics:
edit: well i would show you if the darn pictures will upload.. working on it
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