LastDollar
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2010
- Messages
- 117
Let me start by telling you that my birth year is 1937, and my starship has Capt Kirk at the helm and Scotty making the warp drive go. In 1963 while drift diving the upper Niagara River I found a treasure, a big 6-cylinder Mercury Outboard motor of the white kind. Old hands will remember when Mercury?s weren?t black. My Ship at that time was a 1922 CM Lane 20ft steel lifeboat that I put an old Chrysler flat head marine engine in. That is a whole story itself. Told my future wife that I had a cabin cruiser!
The Mercury was an 80 Hp direct reversing motor. Forward was on, natural was off, and reverse was starting the engine backwards. You soon learned dead stick landings! The motor had been in long enough to rust a hole in the one of the ignition coils and badly corrode some of the pot metal throttle linkages on the carburetors. When I got the crankcase opened it was pristine not a drop of rust anywhere! That?s when we, my future wife and I (mostly I), decided to buy the biggest outboard boat we could find. That?s when the ?Last Dollar? came into our lives. She was the ?new 1962 21? 7? Starcraft Sunchief (complete with the football team). That?s what the brochure showed. What more could a skin-diver ask for, all that room. The boat came in October and in November we got married, the day after JFK was shot (what a way to start a honeymoon). During the rebuild of the motor my pint size Granddad taught me some tricks on stubborn bolts and nuts. He showed me his trick on some of the stubborn nuts that had defeated me (at that time I was working construction and not exactly petite, 5?11? and 215lbs, a lot of it between the ears). I digress, anyhow Granddad?s technique was to apply a strong steady torque on the stubborn fitting and hold it for a long time, (with Granddad saying ? I am tougher than you? talking to the stubborn nut or bolt). You know that still works today. I know, I know break out the impact wrench.
I was amazed at the lengths people would go to rehab their finds.
1972 Re-powered with a Mercury 1350 135 hp.
Then I got thinking back about the first repaint in the late 70?s, hull upside down and shot automotive enamel, (bad choice) back upright and shot the deck with Imron (a two part epoxy paint) that is still there. Didn?t know about positive pressure respirators (we used paper masks and are still breathing).
Move forward to Mid 90?s What?s this, the transom and floorboards are spongy. Oh poop! Motor off and off the trailer with Last Dollar. Strip out all the wood except for the front deck. Up on the side and find all the bad rivets.
During the life of the boat I had several rivets pop and got the stainless sheet metal screw fix (I think a total of 3). In total we replaced 17 suspect rivets with the next size and proceeded to re-rivet (buck) all of the rivets, I had the loan of a rivet gun and the wife did the bucking. By the time we got done we had half of the neighborhood coming to see what that god awful noise was, (I think my ears are still ringing from that episode).
Latest episode in the ongoing rehab. While on an RV trip my neighbor calls to tell me the windshield has blown loose and that he had secured it.
O Poop! I had been planning to replace the windshield, as the Plexiglas had crazed so bad that when at the right angle into the sun we could hardly see. Where do you get a windshield for a 47-year-old boat??? This windshield was in just two parts a left and a right side with the side windows part of the front piece, it was almost a 90deg bend. First thing I did was surf the web found a place in Florida and a place in Canada. Both places wanted the old windshield as a pattern and had to have it to give me a quote. OH Boy shipping down and back if I didn?t like the price. Was at the neighbor?s garage (place of many beers) and lamenting my problems. Some one asked if I tried some local places that worked with Plexiglas. DUH! Called Great Lakes Plastics. Sure no problem bring them in and we can do it. Quote was $135 a side and that they could make them ?? wider to compensate for the shrinkage over the years. Only problem I had now was how to hold the windshield in place. SC had used spring clips that had tabs that fit into holes in the windshield edge and snapped in to the track. Of course all of the clips had badly rusted and were of no use. Played with some metal banding strips but no luck. Back to the Web and read about 3M 5200 that looked like the way to go. Too bad the job is done. I am sure that some one on the forum has a better Sealant adhesive that could be used.
Last Dollar and we have put a lot of water under the keel and still manage to stir up the water in front of the house.
The Last Dollar also has wheels and had a lot of good road trips. Three of the Great Lakes, all of the major finger lakes, plus some of the hangnails lakes, a trip on the Erie Barge canal to Watkins Glen, and a trip through New York City to Long Island. That put us in Long Island sound and the Atlantic Ocean courtesy of the Long Island canal. Oh did I tell you that we also are still trying to capture Moby ****!
The boat trailer leads a double life. It gets converted into a four-place snowmobile trailer for wintertime play. The Last Dollar never complains, as long as it gets its wheels back for the boating season.
The Mercury was an 80 Hp direct reversing motor. Forward was on, natural was off, and reverse was starting the engine backwards. You soon learned dead stick landings! The motor had been in long enough to rust a hole in the one of the ignition coils and badly corrode some of the pot metal throttle linkages on the carburetors. When I got the crankcase opened it was pristine not a drop of rust anywhere! That?s when we, my future wife and I (mostly I), decided to buy the biggest outboard boat we could find. That?s when the ?Last Dollar? came into our lives. She was the ?new 1962 21? 7? Starcraft Sunchief (complete with the football team). That?s what the brochure showed. What more could a skin-diver ask for, all that room. The boat came in October and in November we got married, the day after JFK was shot (what a way to start a honeymoon). During the rebuild of the motor my pint size Granddad taught me some tricks on stubborn bolts and nuts. He showed me his trick on some of the stubborn nuts that had defeated me (at that time I was working construction and not exactly petite, 5?11? and 215lbs, a lot of it between the ears). I digress, anyhow Granddad?s technique was to apply a strong steady torque on the stubborn fitting and hold it for a long time, (with Granddad saying ? I am tougher than you? talking to the stubborn nut or bolt). You know that still works today. I know, I know break out the impact wrench.
I was amazed at the lengths people would go to rehab their finds.
1972 Re-powered with a Mercury 1350 135 hp.
Then I got thinking back about the first repaint in the late 70?s, hull upside down and shot automotive enamel, (bad choice) back upright and shot the deck with Imron (a two part epoxy paint) that is still there. Didn?t know about positive pressure respirators (we used paper masks and are still breathing).
Move forward to Mid 90?s What?s this, the transom and floorboards are spongy. Oh poop! Motor off and off the trailer with Last Dollar. Strip out all the wood except for the front deck. Up on the side and find all the bad rivets.
During the life of the boat I had several rivets pop and got the stainless sheet metal screw fix (I think a total of 3). In total we replaced 17 suspect rivets with the next size and proceeded to re-rivet (buck) all of the rivets, I had the loan of a rivet gun and the wife did the bucking. By the time we got done we had half of the neighborhood coming to see what that god awful noise was, (I think my ears are still ringing from that episode).
Latest episode in the ongoing rehab. While on an RV trip my neighbor calls to tell me the windshield has blown loose and that he had secured it.
O Poop! I had been planning to replace the windshield, as the Plexiglas had crazed so bad that when at the right angle into the sun we could hardly see. Where do you get a windshield for a 47-year-old boat??? This windshield was in just two parts a left and a right side with the side windows part of the front piece, it was almost a 90deg bend. First thing I did was surf the web found a place in Florida and a place in Canada. Both places wanted the old windshield as a pattern and had to have it to give me a quote. OH Boy shipping down and back if I didn?t like the price. Was at the neighbor?s garage (place of many beers) and lamenting my problems. Some one asked if I tried some local places that worked with Plexiglas. DUH! Called Great Lakes Plastics. Sure no problem bring them in and we can do it. Quote was $135 a side and that they could make them ?? wider to compensate for the shrinkage over the years. Only problem I had now was how to hold the windshield in place. SC had used spring clips that had tabs that fit into holes in the windshield edge and snapped in to the track. Of course all of the clips had badly rusted and were of no use. Played with some metal banding strips but no luck. Back to the Web and read about 3M 5200 that looked like the way to go. Too bad the job is done. I am sure that some one on the forum has a better Sealant adhesive that could be used.
Last Dollar and we have put a lot of water under the keel and still manage to stir up the water in front of the house.
The Last Dollar also has wheels and had a lot of good road trips. Three of the Great Lakes, all of the major finger lakes, plus some of the hangnails lakes, a trip on the Erie Barge canal to Watkins Glen, and a trip through New York City to Long Island. That put us in Long Island sound and the Atlantic Ocean courtesy of the Long Island canal. Oh did I tell you that we also are still trying to capture Moby ****!
The boat trailer leads a double life. It gets converted into a four-place snowmobile trailer for wintertime play. The Last Dollar never complains, as long as it gets its wheels back for the boating season.
