The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

[swimmin' for shore]

I'm going to buy it. I'm at sea, though, so I can't go over to see it yet. Curiosity is killing me, and the owner can't get a picture sent for me. It isn't her fault, but I digress.<br />I'm looking for a picture of a 1958 Lonestar Aluminum runabout. The serial number on hers is A0GPR. It's 15' long, or so she says. There's currently a 60 hp evinrude on it, although I doubt that it's stock. Very basic. Open bow. High sides, and a very wide boat. As much as 6 or 6 1/2', perhaps. Whether it came as stock or not, there's a wood floor in it, and a drivers station, like a console, on the stbd. side. I've checked fiberglassics, and various other places on the net. If anyone has one and has a picture, or can locate one, I'd really appreciate it. And then we'll get into my next restoration. I swear that I'm taking and posting pictures of this one, too!

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Well, I bought the boat. She did finally manage to send some pictures, though slowly. This should be a full posting that I'll follow through to the end of my project, so I'll appreciate any thoughts, comments, and suggestions that anyone may have. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll come across a question or two. Please bear with me if I'm missing things, and suggest them. This is a work in progress, and likely to need to be adapted to the current situation as the project goes through the winter. I certainly cannot profess to be very knowledgeable about boating, but I've learned a lot from this forum over the past year. Fortunately for me, this is a full winter project, if I need it to be. I'm not under the gun to be finished at any given time, and I hope to put a lot of love into this boat. <br />The project steps that I'm foreseeing are listed below. I'm out of the normal order that I'd like to follow for working inside to out, but weather is going to dictate that I'll have to paint the boat first if I'm to do it at all before our rainy season starts, and that's going to be pretty quickly here. <br />1. Sandblast and paint the outside of the boat. I want to use cream as the primary color with burgundy to back it up, and black for lettering and any pinstripes, shadows, etc...Painting this boat is going to be one of my biggest challenges. I can paint the boat, but I'm not artistically inclined, so I'm concerned with design. I want to take this aluminum runabout, which looks big and bulky compared to the newer aluminum boats that are out, and I want to make it look somewhat sleek and sharky. If you've seen a sharp paintjob that you think I could do at home with normal equipment, please send me a picture. The colors don't matter. I'll adapt them to match mine. My email is in my profile, listed as my homepage.<br />2. Remove the consoles that are in the boat. <br />3. Build a single center console, which I believe that I'm going to put on the right side. I wanted it right in the center, but where would I run the steering and throttle cables. Since I'm not rebuilding the floor, I couldn't go underneath it. I'm optimistic that I can build this console to fit over an 18 gallon gas tank that I already have from a previous boat. It's going to have to go somewhere, and this is going to be the biggest space available.<br />4. Build seating bases up in the bow, and a bench across the stern. I'll probably also put a small bench right in front of the new center console. I'm a huge fan of using every available inch, so every seat base will have the cushions hinged to open up into storage, cooler, and so forth. I'll cut holes in the floor for captain and co-captain swivel seats. One of the great things about this boat is that the sides are flat, rather than curved. building up to them should be a breeze compared to many boats. <br />5. Fiberglass the floor, steering console, and seating bases into place.<br />6. Paint the floor and interior. I'll be non-skidding the deck.<br />7. Cushions for the bench, bow seats, and anything else that I have yet to consider.<br />8. Finish the center console by adding a windshield, new steering system(the old is an outdated pulley system), gauges, throttle, etc... <br />9. The top. The picture and explanation for this is included on my shareaproject page.<br />10. The motor. This one will work or I have another, bigger motor in the garage that already runs.<br />11. Finishing touches, and by this time I'll probaby have a few spots to repair on the hull from climbing in and out of the boat. <br /><br /> 1958 Lonestar aluminum runabout project

 

[Chinewalker]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Hi SFS,<br /> Looks like quite a project on your hands! <br /> One note of personal experience. My cousin has a very similar Lone Star hull, although hers has a closed bow. Looks like the same hull, though. She has a 50hp Force with Power Trim on it. The hull is VERY sensitive to trim level. Scared the ****ens out of me once when I trimmed in a bit and it dumped the bow enough to cause the hull to bow steer a bit. Not dangerously, but enough to get my attention. It's also not the smoothest ride in the world. Good inland waters boat, but it's a calm day only boat here on the St. Lawrence.<br /><br />- Scott

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Hi Chinewalker. My experience with larger aluminum hulls has been just like that-that they're pretty loud in rougher waters, and seem to have rougher handling. They feel like they're hitting harder, whether that's true or not. It's the one thing that has me thinking of foaming under the floor. I'd at least like to deaden the beating of the water against the hull. I'm iffy about it, though, without redoing the whole floor. The stringers in old Lonestars are aluminum, so I don't think there's any way to ensure proper drainage off of the foam.

 

[tgissel]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

I own an aluminum cabin cruiser " Marinette ", the inside of the hull is sprayed with an undercoating tarry substance. My boat is a 1968 and there is no corrosion damage of any kind inside or outside. This is a great insulator of noise. IMO

 

[G DANE]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

I dont think the tripple loopers ever had pionts ignition.

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Update-<br />I picked up the boat on Friday morning. I was home for just a couple of hours, but managed to take a handful of "before" pictures. I also hit the hull with the new sandblaster. It's a pressure model, and man is it fast! I'll be working with the weather this week, but I should be able to sandblast the inside and outside of the hull in 3 to 4 hours flat. I'm pretty stoked about that. <br />The deck is put in in a tiered fashion. The front, up in the bow, is the highest point. Rather than one straight shot back to the stern, it steps down to the platform for the consoles, and then down again to the stern area. I like this, actually. It means that I can put the deck in in pieces, and it should look somewhat neater.<br />I took the deck piece off up in the bow. SS screws hold the deck down to aluminum stringers. The bow is the one piece that was exposed to the rain, and it's rotten up there. There are good and bad qualities to this tiered deck, obviously. Waterproof it is not. It is pretty easy to remove, though. Under the deck, the previous owner has stuffed big blocks of styrofoam. The deck is designed for the water to just run down the sides of the gunnels and back to a bilge pump at the stern. I was considering foam for under the deck, but the current construction doesn't really agree with it.<br />The next observation is that I have the cables for the pulley steering run from the stbd. side console to the gunnel. With the current setup, I can't change to a center console. I haven't changed a steering system before, so I'm going to check into it. I'm interested in running something under the deck, possibly? If anyone has done this, I'd love to hear.<br />Next-the boat has 2 cracks in the bottom of the hull. They're elongated cracks, one on each side of the keel, almost on the outer edges of the bottom. The last owner marked them with permanant marker, and then caulked them. Bad business, and I'll remove the caulk and have those 2 cracks welded. <br />Last but not least, the title is wrong. It's a 16' boat. I measured it, then measured again. There was a mixup somewhere along the way. <br />I'll be posting pictures to the shareaproject page sometime today. I'm still working on paint schemes, if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks for your input so far.<br />tgissel-I love that you mentioned the barrier coating. I've had all weekend to think about this, and I had been considering it. I'll be checking prices on it in the coming week or so.<br />GDANE-thank you for your comment, as well. I'm not prepared to get into the motor just yet, but I'll be taking that over to the motor forum in the coming weeks, as well. I've worked on a couple of smaller trolling motors, but nothing like this. It looks like a mess, although I know that it's just a bigger version of a smaller motor. More than likely, this one's going to the marina. We'll see, though.

 

[CalicoKid]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

I remember a guy running wiring and steering cables under the floor of his center console boat in PVC electrical conduit on this board. I think his user name was Scuda, you could try searching it.

 

[drwgblanks]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

You want some more flotation? I'll tell you what I did with my old 16 ft alumacraft. When I rebuilt my floor, I put styrofoam for home construction under it. It's alot cheaper than marine foam, and if you get that deck screwed down well enough, it will float it. If you don't, then it will just pull the floor out if you get too much water in it. I put the white styrofoam home insulation from Lowe's in mine. But the blue tri fold for vinyl works too. You can buy many different thicknesses of the white stuff. Trust me, it will float it as mine developed bad leaks at the end of it's career.

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

update-<br />Good night last night. I picked up 6-100 lb. bags of silica. I figured that that should be enough to at least take care of the boat. It took an hour and 10 minutes to complete the entire stbd. side of the boat. It's clean and looking naked. With the pressure blaster, I used a little over a bag of sand. With the gravity feed blaster, it would have taken 4 bags and 2 days of work. I'm pretty happy. <br />With all of the spare time on my hands, I took out the second section of deck, so the deck is halfway out. I also removed both consoles, which took a bit more time since he used steel bolts and they'd rusted. I cut the old steering system back, as well as removing all of the wires from the driver console. The boat looks empty.<br />It would appear that the whole bottom is filled with box styrofoam that was cut to fit. No reason to think I'll be facing anything different as I take the remainder of the deck off. Naturally, little bits and pieces of styrofoam had come loose. The hull is filled with these little things. I'll vacuum them, but it leaves me wondering if there was never a problem with the bilge pump clogging up.<br />No big issues last night. I'm still not sure if I like that any water that gets in the boat just runs down the sides to the back. On the other hand, it's very simple. I'd just hate to replace a rotten deck every year or two, so I'm playing with various ideas to seal the edges of the deck and redirect all water to the stern for bilge pumping. If I don't do that, I'll probably epoxy the new deck on both sides and the edges, and then pre-drill and epoxy the new screw holes. If I can seal it well enough, the water can run whereever it wants without rotting the deck. I'll probably change my mind a dozen times before I get to the deck.<br />I have contact with a welding shop who can weld the 2 cracks on the keel and they're also going to do the pipe bending fabrication for my top. I want to call it a T-top, but I'm set on it extending up from each gunwale. They're reasonably priced, and the owner seems excited to be working on something other than the normal welding that they do. I'll be going up there on Friday to get the cracks welded, and lay out the plan for the rails and top. I'm leaning toward using 1" aluminum pipe for hand rails that will run straight down the gunwale tops, and then building the top to come up from the handrails. There are other ideas, but I have to keep it simple or I'm bound to burn out.<br />Calico, thanks. Good memory, too. I looked up his post. He didn't say a lot about the process, at least in the post that I found, but he did implement a plan that is very close to what I'm going to do. This console's going to be very multi-purpose because I'm running steering cables down from it, and I'm also going to put the 18 gallon gas tank under there and run fuel lines under the floor. I'll do the back end of the floor in 3 sections so that it is easy to remove the mid-section and get to all lines and piping, in case of future problems under there. I hate seeing gas tanks enclosed in floors for this specific reason.<br />drwgblanks...interesting name...I had read that the home flotation foam doesn't resist water very well. Am I right or wrong? If I'm wrong, I'm all for it. Otherwise, I remain undecided. The sub-floor is pretty well sectioned, so I may just foam it in 3 or 4 different sections that I can keep out of the main path of the water. It may have been Boomyal who used the disappearing rope trick, but I'm not sure if I'm up for that much planning. I love simple, and my plan is to keep it just so.<br />Thanks to everyone thus far for the suggestions. I promise that I'm listening, so keep 'em coming! I'm going to have to get more pictures posted, but I keep forgetting to bring the chord for the camera to work. I'll remember it tomorrow and get you some updated pictures.

 

[drwgblanks]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Hey swimming. It really depends on which density you get. I had some stuff that was more like a styrofoam cooler, not necessarily the stuff that falls apart so easily and is really spongy. Also, that trifold, man you can float on that stuff out on the water.

 

[EZLoader]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

With respect to the 2 hull cracks you might check out this site that has an aluminum repair product that looked easy enough for self repair:<br /><br /> http://www.newtechnologyproducts.net/index.htm

 

[KilroyJC]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Just my $0.02 -<br /><br />I used the 4lb/cu.ft foam in my 18' aluminum Starcraft, & it is quieter than my friend's Boston Whaler! Plus, it stiffened up the hull, and when you jump on the deck it's like landing on the sidewalk.<br /><br />Good Luck with the project!!!<br /><br />Matt M

 

[CalicoKid]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

If you do use any PVC conduit for chases you can heat and bend it rather than use factory made 90 bends and couplers. That way you can make nice long sweeps and eliminate a bunch of joints. For bigger pipe you will need an oven made for bending PVC, pal up with an electrician, for anything 1" and under a halogen work light does the job.

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

At last, pictures are updated. A lot of work has been done this week. The explanation is attached to the pictures on my shareaproject site, so I'll leave it at that. It should be a busy weekend, but I have some definite goals this weekend for the boat, and I think that it will be a whole different ballgame by Monday. I'm still in the <br />"destruction" phase now, but I think that Monday will see me moving into the rebuilding stage. I have a lot of supplies to pick up or order. <br />Re:the sub-floor. I've changed modes with the sub-floor one more time. I actually made contact with a company that can produce the "dissolving rope". If it isn't the same, it is probably something similar to what Boomyal used in his restoration. The president of the company contacted me today, and asked that I give him a call this afternoon, which I will do. I'm now planning to foam the outside sections of the floor. I'm going to use the old floor to do this with. I'll screw it back down, drill holes, fill with foam, and when it is cured, I'll take it back out and put in the new, solid floor. No holes in my new floor this way. I'm going to stick with what was done before, with regard to the floor. I'm going to use the epoxy I already have to seal the floor on both sides, then screw it down with epoxy in the new screw holes. That way, I have a removeable floor that shouldn't rot anytime soon. I'll use the dissolving rope to create channels for water to run down to the middle of the boat. In the middle, I'm going to use herculiner, which is a do-it-yourself type of Rhinoliner that you can buy at the local auto parts store. I want that middle channel under the floor to remain open because I plan to run PVC pipe with the steering cable and other wiring underneath there. For that single section, I'll build a separate piece of deck that is hinged to allow for access to everything below. If there's enough space, I may even build a small storage space in there, if there is enough space remaining. <br /> 1958 Lonestar runabout

 

[CalicoKid]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Consider wrapping the old floor in plastic sheeting before you put it back in and foam the boat. That way you won't have the floor and foam all stuck together, it will leave a nicer surface on the foam.

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Hey Calico. Good call. I was thinking along those lines. I was going to vaseline the bottom of the floor, but plastic will probably accomplish the same thing. <br />Okay. Update, and more pictures tomorrow. The weekend is finished. I built the center console, and it's beautiful. I'm going to fiberglass it tomorrow night, if all goes well. Last night, I sanded the corners around and filled all screw holes with epoxy putty. I have some cloth and epoxy at home, so I'll fiberglass it asap. After I get the cloth down and it starts to get tacky, I'll go ahead and paint it while the pores are still open. It'll just be a nice soft beige color. If I'm going in the wrong direction by painting it so soon, someone please correct me.<br />The hardtop is being made now, and I'll pick it up on the 15th. The center console will have a small windshield on it, and there's a bench built right to the front of it so I need to upholster some cushions soon. I can't put it in yet, as I'm still waiting for urethane foam for under the new floor. Nevertheless, it's coming along. 1958 Lonestar

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

I'm really remiss with these pictures. I finally got out to take some, and the batteries in the camera are done. I'll get to it, and post pics of the center console and all that. It's built, holes are cut out for gauges that I purchased yesterday, steering holes are cut, and I need to locate a switch panel to fit in, as there's a place for it. Other than that, I need to epoxy and paint the console, place the little door in front, and I'll be upholstering the bench seat in front of it. Good stuff. <br />I'm getting ready to order urethane foam for beneath the floor. The boat is 16x6, but there are a few areas that don't get foam. Can anyone help me with how much foam I should order? A 5 gallon kit seems like too much. I was leaning toward a 2 gal. kit, but I thought that I should ask first. Thanks for any help you can provide. James

 

[ondarvr]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

SFS<br /><br />If you think this is your last rebuild then get a small amount of foam, but the way you go through boats, that extra foam may only last a couple of weeks. Where do you get your foam?

 

[swimmin' for shore]

Re: The rebuild of an aluminum runabout

Hey ondarvr. LOL. You've got me figured out now. The time is short, but I've been a long ways since you looked at the Mark Twain. 5 boats later...<br />I looked on ebay, and the stores that sell it are outrageous. The cheapest I can find is uscomposites. If you know differently, please say so, or just email or call me. <br />I don't mind buying a little extra, but I'm trying to keep expenses down on this one so I wanted to just get enough to make it through. Either way, I still don't know exactly how much I need. I've done some searching for it, but I'm going to need it in laymens terms, I suppose.