'79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

[superwooter]

well, here's the beginning of the journey...

i have a 1979 Champion Python 16' Tri-hull with a '78 Mercury 700 Thunderbolt. I picked the boat up in october 2009 sort of by way of inheritance. the only condition was that i drive from South Mississippi to St. Louis, Missouri to get it... sight unseen. My wife's family who was in possession of the boat had no idea about boats in order to describe it to me. the most information i had was that it had a steering wheel and that 4 people had ridden in it at one time. i'm perfectly pleased with what it turned out to be, but it is in need of a serious update.

the engine turned out to be terrific after a carb cleaning and after replacing most of the wiring; no big deal. compression is perfect with 130 psi on all 3 cylinders. the primary issues with the boat are cosmetic and that's what i'll be sharing in this thread. this past weekend, my cousin/best bud/fishing & hunting partner and i began the process. here's some pics of what we have done so far...

first a couple before shots...

in this pic, the gas/battery compartment had already been partially disassembled...

and here, the compartment has been removed and the carpet has been pulled back halfway up the deck from the rear...

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

we also built a storage box/seat base right beside the driver seat which is on top of the tiny live well. it was too dark saturday night when we finished that part to get any pics, so those will come later.

the objective will be to replace all of the carpet with a non-skid deck paint. we had considered using herculiner but the cost is pretty high. what we have (at this time) decided to go with is a white Glidden deck paint with Softsand rubber granule additive. i was thinking i'd get the green Softsand to go with the white deck paint to go with the mint green 70's color of the hull. here's a picture from the Softsand website...

http://www.softsandrubber.com/images/ss-green.jpg

before i could begin, i had to get the manual hydraulic trim pump repaired. my local hydraulic shop did the work which i believe only including replacing o-rings. here's a picture of that before the fix. you can see the fluid leaking all down the side of the console...

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

we had a chance to work on it a bit more last night. we were able to complete the seat base/storage box and we got all of the carpet out along with most of the old carpet adhesive.

first, here's a pic of how far we got saturday night. it was too dark to take a picture when we finished, so here it is now...

next, we made the detailed cut of the board for the front face of the seat base...

we used a jigsaw to get the curves to fit the contour of the side of the boat.

and here's the last pic i got before it got dark just before we completed removing the carpet...

the next steps will be:
-finish removing the old carpet adhesive to get the deck ready for paint
-rebuild the battery/fuel compartment so the lid opens to the rear

once that is finished, i believe we'll be ready to start the paint.

one hick-up we may have is the oily spot on the deck underneath the manual hydraulic pump. you may notice in the pics that the area all around the steering and controls is black. i've been told that acetone should take care of this. i'm open to any suggestions you may have to treat this area to ensure the paint will stick.

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

we've made a lot of progress since the last post...

we rebuilt the fuel/battery storage compartment

we removed the new storage boxes/seat base and sanded everything down and removed any old carpet adhesive and then put the boxes back in place

i took a hint from a few other restorers on iboats and built a base for the front pedestal seat

we finished there for the night and started painting the next day.

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

here's the pics after the second coat of paint. we decided against the SoftSand rubber additive after i read several reviews saying that the rubber granules knock loose under foot and end up rolling around on the deck causing a slipping hazard. instead, we used behr non-skid additive from home depot. it added a fine grit that should get the job done. here's the pics...

after about an hour of dry time, i had to set the lids in place to see what it was going to look like...

we caulked up all of the gaps and were very pleased with the outcome. the final steps will be to assemble everything (install seats and hinges). we plan on doing that tomorrow and then we'll take it to the lake on sunday.

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

IT IS FINISHED.

last night we mounted the seats and all of the hardware. we also hooked up the new gas tanks, fuel line and connectors.

and here's the pics...

 

[Shife]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

Neat boat. What does the hydraulic lever on the side of the console do?

 

[superwooter]

Re: '79 Champion Deck up Rebuild

it is a manual trim pump. i had it repaired before i started the remodel job. it worked but was leaking hydraulic fluid all over the deck. i did some research on it and it seems Dole Fluid Power Products only made these for about 2 or 3 years before going out of business. i posted a thread about it in the mercury repair section (i think) and a guy said his friend put a convertible top electric motor on his Dole hand pump to turn it into an electric trim. he must have been more ingenuitive than i am!