New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

[redfury]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

It's a pretty standard aluminum boat. Most likely you have ribs going the width of the hull vs. standard full length stringers. Which is nice, because you have plenty of floor support in there to work with. Once you have it all tore down, the rebuild will go quickly. It's pretty easy really. But be methodical about it when you put it back together. Drill a hole, fill with epoxy or something else that will seal it ( epoxy would be best ) and then put the screw in ( avoid Stainless if you use pressure treat as the chems in PT will corrode the SS ).

At a minimum, I'd dry out whatever wood you are using and at least put a coat of exterior grade paint on the side that faces the bottom of the boat, making sure to get the ends well sealed up. It just makes sense if you want to do it "right". To do it "really well", encapsulating the wood with 'glass would be best. Anything to help water stay away from that wood.

Wish I would have nabbed the Sea Nymph my brother got rid of, but the wife already said the one project I had was enough, and I didn't have a place to keep it at the time either

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Well we will be using marine grade plywood and not a pressure treated plywood (not sure what is different, but we will be avoiding the green treated and brown treated at all costs.)

I thought stainless steel hardware was fine to use with marine grade plywood.

Another thing that we want to do is redo the wiring throughout, namely because some critters got inside one time and chewed on the wiring I have been looking for a nice 4 or 6 panel switch, but none of the switch panels I have seen have a 3 way momentary on-off-on switch for the tilt fuction of the motor.

What have you folks done as far as the tilt control switch goes?

 

[JDowie]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

I just did this last off season on my 16' Starcraft. I pulled out the deck and foam. I used the existing floor boards when possible to cut the template for the new floor. I bought 5/8" regular 5 ply plywood, sanded it and coated it with gluvit. I used the extra plywood to re-inforce the seat pedestals. You will need a hole saw, a sander, a drill, a jigsaw, and a circular saw. Use all stailess steel fasteners, you won't regret it. I did not replace the foam. It's not really necessary, I just went with no foam. I made the floor removable with a little effort if I decide to go back in and do foam. I put in all new pedestal seats. Instead of carpeting you might want to consider tuff-coat paint from bass pro shopps. It only cost me around $75 to paint the deck, it looks great, and I don't have to worry about carpet trapping in the water. Always cover your boat, and it will last for 10+ years before it needs rebuilding again.

3 sheets plywood - $170
1 gallon gluvit - $80
1 gallon Tuff-coat and a quart of primer - $75
4 New seats/pedestals/SS bolts - $300
SS Bolts and other tools and stuff - $100-$150

Total - $775


You may want to consider rebuilding the transom while you are in there. Mine was just 3 sections of 2x10's dropped in.I cut new ones, sealed them, and painted them and used new SS bolts for around another $100.

You won't regret the time, effort, and money. It's fun and a great learning experience. Your boat will be just like new for less than $1000!

I posted some pictures down below in another post. Thanks to Oops for convincing me that foam is carp!

 

[92excel]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

If you want pictures e-mail me at jdowie@hotmail.com you can see how the tuff coat and pedestal seats came out.

I think we ALL want to see pictures.. use photobucket and post them here!

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Speaking of Photobucket - here is the link to the "day 1" album - all 145 pictures.

http://s33.photobucket.com/albums/d59/Maxx102/Boat%20Rebuild%20-%20Day%201/

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

The reason why we are going with carpeting instead of the traction / sandpaper grip coating is because we have a lot of smaller children in our family and it would be a lot more comfortable for them, especially if we are in the middle of the lake and they don't want tube or ski anymore. Carpet is a lot easier on the feet.

 

[Silver Heels]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Allo,

The rating on the transom is for horsepower, not weight. For what its worth, I am busy repairing the after-effects of using pressure treated plywood on my boat. Despite what others say, I would never use it near aluminum unless you want a boat that looks like swiss cheese. Sure, you can insulate pt ply from the aluminum or encapsulate it in glass. But, for what its worth, I just picked up two sheets of 3/4 marine ply from Menards today for 60 bucks a sheet. Its not enough more than regular plywood- pressure treated or not to warrant the added expense and time spent making these lesser grades of plywood work. You've got a nice boat and a good candidate for a restoration

 

[JDowie]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Here are some pics of my tear out and the new deck. I didn't get a lot of good in process pictures though. When I paint this season I will.

Here is the link to the entire album:

http://s586.photobucket.com/albums/ss303/JDowie79/Boat Restoration/

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Here's a new update - Day "2" of the tear out and rebuild.

Here's the highlights - removed driver console, tore out old carpet, removed old plywood. Sounds simple enough, but with one drill and 2 drill bits sacrificed due to drilling out rivet heads. Anyway, here is how the boat looked when we started on day two.

And here are some shots of how it looks now.

Here are the pieces of the decking - we are saving these to be used as a template for the new decking.

And here is the old driver's console - the wood panel look was done by some kind of sticker, but the plywood under the sticker is rotted so that will be replaced as well.

And here are the new switches that I have found to replace the old (and very corroded) switches, which were not labeled btw.

 

[derekpfeiffer]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

i have the same size boat and am in the process of a rebuild i got mine for 800 with a 50hp evinrude so your ahead of me. i am planning on using some Mahagony planks that are 3/4" thik. i am gonna shiplap them and just throw some cheap marine carpet on them. the mahog will not rot for a very long long long time beacuse i never leave the boat in the water. As for your HP rating i was told it has more to do with the HP rating than weight. if you put a 125 on a boat rated for 90 first off its stupid, (and i think illegal) but also it will put alot of stress on the transom. just stick with the 70 it is plenty big enough for what you need. let me know how things work out. Also for the dash try to find some chunks of oak to make it rot-proof. i am planning on using some white alum or even diamond plate to cover it. i think it will look cool

I'd think twice about useing the aluminum diamond tread plate for a dash...Unless you're not plannning on boating on sunny days The glare would be unbareable from the polished aluminum...just my two cents...however it would look cool

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Well it's been over a year and I guess I should provide an update or two, or, three, or even four hehehehe...anyway, I lost track of how many days we took to tear out and rebuild, but we took about 4 months off during the rebuild over the winter, namely because we (my extended family and I) were getting on each others nerves.

So the continueation of the story.

After we got the old floor out, we kept the pieces as a template. Most of the day was spent marking, cutting, sanding, cutting, and screwing the new floor into place.

The wood is treated plywood we picked up from Home Depot (I think) and allowed it 4 weeks in heated basement to dry out....which did the trick.

The black stuff you see on the plywood is a rubberized membrane that my uncle picked up from somewhere, the entire bottom of the plywood has the rubber membrane, and then it overlaps about 4 to 6 inches and then fastened into place.

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

After we got the floor in, we moved on to the repainting part of the project.

We removed every single bolt and broken rivet that we could and then we began sanding....and sanding.....and sanding.....and did I mentioned we sanded???


Once the sanding was completed, we started with the largest part of the color which was white...my cousin and his friend did the whole boat white with the rolling tip method and put a nice three coats on....looks wonderful....

I came in the next week and did the blue.

here's some photos.

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Well because I didn't bring my camera with me every single day, I missed out the last few days we worked on the boat.

But to sum it all up, one day was spent gluing the new carpet in, wrapping the matching gray vinyl that I had order to match the seats around the two side pieces. Attaching the new rub rail and installing the insert.

We moved on to reinstalling the consoles, then the windshield parts, then I cam along and did the wiring, finally we got the front bench seat all done.

For the replacement dashes, instead of diamond plate, I came across something that I thought would work a lot better, black marine board.

Well, see the final results of our hard work....this was completed 4 days ago as of this posting and I cannot wait to take her out on the water.

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Oh...hehehe I should also mention the Gray stripe along the outside of the boat in-between the blue and white.....that wasn't in our original plans....that was added to cover up a boo boo....we put two widths of blue painters tape and when we peeled it off, it left a nice 3 inch unpainted gap between the blue and white.....so we came up with using the gray to match the gray vinyl.....an oops that made it look better in my opinion.

The boat registration was custom made for us by a company called lettertech in St. Paul MN

We switched the old lights out for new LED versions and we added a new bilge pump. We wanted to add a radio like the one switch is for, but we just haven't gotten around to that yet.

And yes, we are going to get to work on that trailer here soon.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Looks great! I like the stripes. I also like your choice of seating arrangement. Kinda makes me wish I'd thought of that. I'd have done a lounge on the passenger side like you did, posh bucket for driver and a jump in the rear.

 

[redfury]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

Yup, looks good. I liked the grey "oops" stripe also...it's a nice accent to the blue. I don't entirely understand the rubber membrane though. Is that under the floor, or above it, with the carpet on top of that?

 

[Maxx102]

Re: New here, season coming to an end, family wishes to overhaul boat

The reason for the rubberized membrane is to prevent galvanic corrosion - which I learned from here - treated plywood and aluminum don't react well with each other, so we used the rubber membrane. The preferred method is to fiberglass the wood, and then install it (I think) but that was a little beyond our budget.

The carpet is installed on top of that and when you are walking on it. you really can't tell where the seams are..