Re: Help with restoring a 1990 Wellcraft
Jason,
My father has a sportsman like yours that has been in the family for 15 years. We have never torn it apart as far as yours but have some experience fixing things over the years. As far as your question "how to remove the bathroom, cabinets (if they need to be removed) etc... Can you guy help with your experience?", I guess i will answer your question with a question, are you talking about the forward wall of the bathroom and the shelf that runs down the outside and aft wall of the bathroom, or are you talking about removing the whole fiberglass liner for the cabin area? I suspect you are talking about the later, which I cannot help with but I have removed the forward bulkhead that makes up the forward wall of the bathroom (head) and the shelf that runs down the outboard and aft sides of the head before. If that is the case, to remove the shelf you need to remove screws that are hidden by the cushion screwed to the forward side of that bulkhead, it unscrews by reaching a philips head screwdriver through the seams of the upholstry, once this is removed you can get to all of the screws that hold the forward end for the shelf and cabinet assembly, the rest of the screws are behind the little sliding doors below the shelf. Given the scope of your project you are probably talking about removing the forward liner and I have provided little to no help.
Have you run the boat before? Dad's is an 89' and has the 260 merc i/o with a first gen alpha 1. I think a 383 would be a smart choice, as it would benifit from a little more power than a standard small block but a big block would be stern heavy. I say this because the scuppers are barely above the waterline when you are fully fueled up and have a couple guys in the back of the cockpit, so if I were in your shoes I would avoid placing any additional weight back there. Ours had plastic through hulls for the scuppers which we replaced with brass, I would recommend that or stainless when you are putting it back together.
Overall it is a nice boat that feels secure if you find youself in some rough weather. We run it on the Chesapeake bay. I would not take it out intentionally into heavy weather but I am confident that it would get me back safely in about anything the bay can throw at it. It can be a wet ride in certain conditions and it's narrow beam and raised helm area makes the boat roll pretty good at rest in a beam sea. I have heard some real boat snob types be very critical on the hull, but these are the type of people that are only satisfied with classic offshore or real high end new boats. For the price you can find these boats I think they offer alot of capability.
Ours lives in a wet slip and the transom and stinger seem to be holding up. We had to rebuild one motor mount and adjacent stringer but overall it is sound. One day soon it will probably be time to consider a rebuild but I'm afraid the old girl isn't worth the investment.
One last note, the original wiring was cheap non-tinned wire that was starting to fail and I rewired most of the auxilary circuits to solve problem.
