Re: 1985 Seaswirl Tempo 17 floor replacement turning into something bigger.
This is starting to look like my boat again. Most of the floor is in (pics tomorrow), tabbed to the hull with 2 layers of 1708 along the sides and rear. I used PL to attach the pieces to the stringers. It was hot today and wow did that PL flow fast! I could have solved my transom filler thickness problem if I would have done it today instead of back in April. Ah well. I still have some detail tabbing and filling to do but the keyhole and engine will be next. I have a template I downloaded from Volvos website. It printed up in real size, so all I had to do was tape the 6 or 8 sheets that came out of my printer together precisely and I have a template! It looks like its the same as the Merc but I'm going to pull the donor drive to measure and be sure before I start cutting my new transom. I think I will cut it then gelcoat it. The donor vessel already has controls, cables, etc installed so it'll just be a matter of moving that stuff over it would seem. I'm going to build a gantry crane out of Habitat For Humanity lumber to do the swap and use a come along as the hoisting device. By the way, so far my entire budget for this project has not exceeded 2000 dollars and that includes the donor vessel purchase,so I'm happy about that. I'm about to go on another break and won't be back until late July. I am determined to splash in August!
This is starting to look like my boat again. Most of the floor is in (pics tomorrow), tabbed to the hull with 2 layers of 1708 along the sides and rear. I used PL to attach the pieces to the stringers. It was hot today and wow did that PL flow fast! I could have solved my transom filler thickness problem if I would have done it today instead of back in April. Ah well. I still have some detail tabbing and filling to do but the keyhole and engine will be next. I have a template I downloaded from Volvos website. It printed up in real size, so all I had to do was tape the 6 or 8 sheets that came out of my printer together precisely and I have a template! It looks like its the same as the Merc but I'm going to pull the donor drive to measure and be sure before I start cutting my new transom. I think I will cut it then gelcoat it. The donor vessel already has controls, cables, etc installed so it'll just be a matter of moving that stuff over it would seem. I'm going to build a gantry crane out of Habitat For Humanity lumber to do the swap and use a come along as the hoisting device. By the way, so far my entire budget for this project has not exceeded 2000 dollars and that includes the donor vessel purchase,so I'm happy about that. I'm about to go on another break and won't be back until late July. I am determined to splash in August!
Anyhow, I ran into a little problem and am looking for some help. When I took out my OMC stuff, I took what I thought was enough measurements to make sure the new engine / drive were going to end up in the right position. Well, I was probably wrong about that. Damn that experiential learning! I did not measure where the old crankshaft CL penetrated the transom. I measured almost every other dimension I could think of, not knowing that that dimension was probably the most important. An OMC crankshaft CL is a moving target due to the way the OMC trims. My trim was, shall we say.. fixed by attrition? Never worked but the boat rode fine, so I didn't worry about it. Anyway, I did not get a lateral position where the old crank CL went through and now I have a little problem. I measured for the Merc CL, using both the 90 degree tool method and the tape measure method (both landed within about 1/8" of each other), and the "X" dimension I got seemed to be an inch higher than the OMC. I just got finished telling you I didn't get the measurement, so how do I know? The keyhole I drew on my transom looked high. In fact, it's actually higher than the original OMC hole by about 1.5" (I had assumed the OMC hole would completely encompass the Merc keyhole). I didn't know if this was kosher or not, so I measured, as closely as I could, my intermediate housing and my transom gasket to try to assess where that CL was. So, from the crank CL to the top of the intermediate housing (on the OMC) was "a" and measuring the gasket (which is a little brittle, but flexible so not completely accurate) from where the housing clamps in there to the top screw hole was "b". Add em together and it lands about an inch lower than my "X" measurement from above. So taking into consideration the inaccurate method I used for measurement, and the fact that the 2 different methods of finding the "X" dimension fell so close together, should I be worried? Should I just go with the X? Maybe split the difference which would drop the "X" by about a half inch?
