I'm going to place my bets on nothing other than foam being damaged.
I'm going to place my bets on nothing other than foam being damaged.
I agree the bilge pump is probably toast but the rest of it is probably fine.
I'm sure hoping you guys are right. On my way out to the shop now to dump water and maybe put the dehumidifier in.
There's still a little ice left. Fortunately I have many circuits to plug things in to because now I have the fan on one circuit, heater in another, and dehumidifier on a third, all under the cover trying to dry things out.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:For family fun space, it's hard to beat a pontoon. Dad has one and it is our go-to fishing and exploring rig. It's slow even with a 40hp on it, but it's sturdy, has tons of space, and drafts very little.
Totally agree. I currently have a Tiara 40 Open and while it's a great boat, my actual boating MO is much more suited to a pontoon. But I want something larger than I'm seeing commercially available.
I would like a 40' x 14' pontoon (so it will fit in my existing berth) but would like it to cruise comfortably at 25 knots. I wouldn't put railings around the perimeter or a lot of other stuff on it either. Just a helm with a few seats in a small surround area and the rest would be wide open. Like an island I can move where I want.
The only thing stopping me? A small piece of gold on my left ring finger.
mtn said:I'm going to place my bets on nothing other than foam being damaged.
Unless foam was added, the Sports didn't come with floatation foam.... at least not in the 70s.
My guess is that you have zero damage. The floor is plywood and it can take a lot of stress. The bilge pump would have frozen equally inside and out, so aside from the possible plastic filter housing, likely undamaged.
Was the battery underwater? If so it likely shorted and did a hard discharge. Otherwise I'll venture it's fine.
Tin boats are tough, so I'm in the camp that the boat is probably fine. Bilge pumps are wear items and not terribly expensive, so if that's all that got wrecked you're in good shape.
The battery just had ice up about 1" over the bottom so the terminals were ok. It measures at 12.49 volts now so a charge and it should be good to go. No apparent leaks from the gas can yet. I haven't tried running the bilge pump yet. The floor looks good and Bouncing around on it didn't reveal any loose spots. Amazing. So far so good. Hopefully I can get to the fixing up part soon instead of the drying out I've been doing. Added to the list to do is get a better cover.
Back when I was still waiting for the boat to defrost, I needed to do something to make progress instead of trying to get back to square one. When I got the boat, the port console looked like this:
and this was lying in the floor of the boat:
That's ... a little rough. So, I traced it onto some 3/4" plywood and cut the shape out of some plywood that I had on hand:
And then, replacing the missing nails with some stainless trim nails I had on hand, I put the aluminum trim onto the new piece:
It's not perfect, but it looks a whole lot better than what I had. So, I put it back into place with some screws I had on hand:
Voila - much better. Again, not perfect, but it's loads better than what was there, and I felt like I was making progress. I've been meaning to do this since I bought the boat. It looks pretty good. It doesn't match the hideous vinyl covered wood on the starboard console, so I might replace that wood too, but we'll see. I may paint this wood or stain it a different color before refinishing it.
I'm awful about keeping threads updated, but I did get the swim platform installed about a month ago. It was very DIY, not much was done for you on the assembly as I guess it changes based on the angle of the transom of your boat and also which handle config you use. Parts on bench:
I had to measure my transom angle, but it turns out there's a "generally accepted standard" and my boat conforms to that of about 12 degrees. The handles were easy to deal with but the lower support for the outboard motor side of it needed bent as did the angle bracket between the platform and the transom. I used my bench vice, big adjustable wrench, and a protractor to help me get it right.
It's tough to get things "level" when the boat is of course no sitting level and the transom isn't level and and ... so I used the relative position of the bubble in the level to try to get the swim platform square with the boat and more or less level front to back. I put a level on a board across the gunnels to set the side to side level and then a level on the gunnel to set the front to back level. I used all that to square everything up and get the holes drilled both in the swim platform and in the transom of the boat. With the holes drilled I could assemble the platform on the shop floor:
And then bolt it to the transom of the boat
There was a problem with the included hardware; it was a mix of metric and SAE, and the lag screws for attaching to the transom had a pronounced shoulder that was too long (ie, would go into the transom, and was wider than the threads) so I replaced it all with matching SAE hardware without the shoulder.
Other than that, it all went smoothly but slowly, and it's on! I'm excited for us to try it out, it looks like a decent quality unit, for the price. My only concern is a bit of a lever action between the ladder and the outboard side bracket; it's just fiberglass there and has a bit of flex to it. I'll keep an eye on it and could probably replace the factory fiberglass shim with some aluminum to reinforce it. It stows neatly and shouldn't interfere with our super slow crawling around the reservoir.
I love reading updates on this boat!
In reply to dculberson :
Nice work on the boat but let's hear a little about the pickup in the background. 
Thanks mtn! But if we could keep from commenting on my thread I'd appreciate it. JUST KIDDING! It's not like I have something cool like a Transit Connect that merits awed silence.
@11GTCS: Ask and ye shall receive: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/my-new-truck-has-inadequate-braking-sloppy-steerin/107982/page1/
I have not towed the boat with that truck since I usually have all four of us when we're going out. But if I do I'll get a pic, I think it'll make a nice looking rig.
On the boat, I am working on filling extra un-used holes in the gunnel and when that's done I'll paint them and the consoles. I had some discussion on that here:
the brazing was going well as far as filling the holes but slowly and it was warping the gunnel and I'm not happy with how flat I could get it afterwards, using a hammer and some wood. So I'm going to shift to some epoxy and will fill a bunch of holes at once so my current task is cleaning around the boat so I can take off the accessories that are in the way and prep the holes for filling. Then paint.
Question on paint: I bought Rustoleum enamel for the paint. But then realized I'm supposed to use an etching primer prior to painting on bare aluminum. Would it be horrible if I didn't use the primer? Would the paint just come off? We talking 5 years or 5 days? I want to get this thing in the water in the next few weeks so I'm trying to minimize and push together steps.
After that, I have switches and choke cable and wiring to move the starting and shutdown controls to the console.
I would not try to rush the paint job. Use the primer. Curtis probably has experience without it, though, so hopefully he will chime in.
OK, I did go ahead and order the aluminum primer. I also got the supplies to add a starter solenoid so I can move the start button to the console.
Good lord. I had a huge post typed up about the hole filling / sanding / priming, and accidentally clicked on a link at the bottom of the page. Auto saving a draft of messages as they're edited would be an awesome add-on to the forum.
OK, let's try again.
After giving up on the brazing, I removed all the things attached to the gunnels and then prepped all the holes by sanding and using a needle file on them so they had a keyhole profile like this > < so the epoxy had something to hold on to. Then I backed each of the holes up with aluminum tape and mixed up a batch of epoxy and put it in a glue syringe. That was hard to dispense but worked great:
That's prior to sanding, obviously. There were some bigger holes in the port console:
So I backed that up by epoxying some aluminum plate to the back side and then filled the holes:
Again, obviously prior to sanding. Then I busted out the sander I have that best fit the shape of the gunnels, starting with 80 grit to smooth out the epoxy filler:
As you can see it came pretty smooth after sanding. I switched to a finer grit to go over the whole thing and prep it for primer. It already looks better even before painting:
Lots of cleaning later and I now have a coat of primer on there. I neglected to take pictures but will soon. It's "better" but far from perfect. I'm trying to stay out of the weeds on this one, it's a $2,000 boat and will never be worth much more than that so a perfect restoration would be overkill. Somewhere in there I cleaned up someone's nasty epoxy patch and smoothed it out with polyester resin, better known as Bondo:
Believe me that's a thousand times better than it was.
While I was vacuuming and re-vacuuming dust, the nasty clear silicone someone used to seal the wood of the transom to the aluminum up top (I'm not sure what that part is called, the angled near-horizontal piece below and in front of the outboard motor) came right off. This part:
I spent some time cleaning that up and will need to re-seal it. Is 3M 5200 the right stuff?
While I was doing all this, I decided to check out the wiring. Wow, it's a disaster. This picture probably tells you all you need to know:
But I'll go ahead and throw in another just in case:
Yeah, that's all got to go. In the center right of the picture you can even see where they joined wires using uninsulated blade terminals and two different circuits are shorted together. There's no fuses anywhere until you get to the console, so if any wires got damaged or any of those uninsulated blade terminals touched a ground you could end up with a fire. I'll put something simple together, I at least have the heat shrink insulated wire connectors. I'm hemming and hawing on whether to buy marine wire or use the good quality but non-marine wire I have on hand. Anyone want to talk sense into me or tell me it's OK to use the "wrong stuff" on a $2,000 boat that I'm not likely to own for decades? I need to put a fuse in the back to then feed +12V to the console. Do you usually fuse the ground or positive side of a circuit on a boat? Also, I assume you hook ground / negative to a terminal and to the battery and do not use the body as a ground. Fortunately there's not a lot to hook up, just the few lights around the boat, the horn, and my new starter solenoid. I'll probably also add a 12v and/or USB accessory ports while I'm at it.
The battery was not in a box - it had a nylon webbing type strap secured to the floor of the boat inside the enclosed area of the back of the boat. Should it be in a box? I assume a manual shutoff is also a good idea?
67LS1 said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:For family fun space, it's hard to beat a pontoon. Dad has one and it is our go-to fishing and exploring rig. It's slow even with a 40hp on it, but it's sturdy, has tons of space, and drafts very little.
Totally agree. I currently have a Tiara 40 Open and while it's a great boat, my actual boating MO is much more suited to a pontoon. But I want something larger than I'm seeing commercially available.
I would like a 40' x 14' pontoon (so it will fit in my existing berth) but would like it to cruise comfortably at 25 knots. I wouldn't put railings around the perimeter or a lot of other stuff on it either. Just a helm with a few seats in a small surround area and the rest would be wide open. Like an island I can move where I want.
The only thing stopping me? A small piece of gold on my left ring finger.
These guys would build it: https://www.corinthiancatamarans.com/index.htm
25kt cruise may be just above their range.
Mine is smaller but I love the versatility of a wide open toon. Sandbar, explore, waterski, dive, camp, whatever. This goes 25mph.
In reply to dculberson :
Nice work, that’s going to look great. Don’t apologize because it’s an older boat; it’s yours, you’re fixing it up nicely and you use it. The best boat is the one you use
On the wiring, yeah it’s a boat thing for sure. You’d think all of that was from previous owners but at least some of that rats nest came from the factory. It wasn’t until relatively recently that more professional looking wiring systems became the standard. Lots of ugly wiring in boats from the 70’s and 80’s.
On 3M5200; that’s really for below waterline repairs that you never want to take apart again. They make a “4200” version that’s more forgiving if you need to take it apart. If it’s just the joint where the splashwell meets the transom you can likely get away with adhesive silicone as that’s more of a waterproofing of the joint than structural. Keep up the great work!
mtn said:I would not try to rush the paint job. Use the primer. Curtis probably has experience without it, though, so hopefully he will chime in.
Oh dear lord.... asking Curtis for paint and body work advice is never a good thing.
I did the prep on my old Sea King runabout which was aluminum, so I can share what I learned from that but I'm not a paint and body guy.
I was told that you can do an etching primer on bare aluminum, but you can't really sand it to make it pretty. The way I was told to do it was to use an orange phosphor solution to etch first, then follow with an oxide primer. I used yellow because I had some left over from a trailer project.
I had my buddy top coat with Imron 2-part which worked well, but for bubbling reasons I would only put Imron above the water line.
Tonight was a side track but I think it will look nice. The new horn came in looking like this:
and I wasn't too pleased with the bare wire look. It's a classic looking boat with a classic looking horn, so what to do.. well, you see my old school fiberglass wire loom there. It's not that great to work with, being fiberglass instead of an easy to use material like cotton or nylon, but with some work I got it onto the wires and the ends heat shrinked (shrunk?):
and then with even more work I got it fed through the grommet and the grommet back into place:
Yes the fiberglass got a little dingy but it should clean off OK. I think it looks much nicer. We'll see how it holds up. I also did some sanding with 220 grit on the primer and wiped it all down to get it ready for the first top coat but failed to get any pictures of that. First top coat tomorrow maybe if it's warm enough.
Nice Starcraft. I have the '75 version with a 75 hp Evenrude motor. Paid $1500 with soft floors and wore out fold down seats. The lower unit seized up from the seals always leaking water and I couldn't find anybody to rebuild it. They said to find a motor built in the '80s as it was supposedly impossible to find parts for. It lasted 5 years. The really nice thing about that boat is that you and your wife can sit in the bow and putt around the lake, only occasionally reaching over your shoulder to adjust the steering wheel to keep you on course while you sip your Bloody Mary. 
I parked it and replaced it with an 85 Crestliner with new floors and carpet and pedestal seats and a 115 hp Yamaha. Paid $3000 and immediately spent another $2000 rebuilding the lower unit and the carbs. This will be it's 4th season. Can't reach around the windshield with this one. 
So, let's round it all up to $800 per year plus fuel to go boating so far.
I don't even know what makes marine wire marine wire. Here in the middle of the country where I'll never see salt (which I don't think is a stretch to say is the same for you) I'd just use what is easy to get and not exorbitantly expensive. It's going to be better than what it is now if you used clear speaker wire on everything, lol.
Someone may have a much better reason (either for against my argument)...but there's my 2 cents.
ClemSparks said:I don't even know what makes marine wire marine wire. Here in the middle of the country where I'll never see salt (which I don't think is a stretch to say is the same for you) I'd just use what is easy to get and not exorbitantly expensive. It's going to be better than what it is now if you used clear speaker wire on everything, lol.
Someone may have a much better reason (either for against my argument)...but there's my 2 cents.
3 main differences, usually.
Tinned copper for corrosion resistance. More copper for better conductivity. Better flexibility.
I don't know if there is a standard to meet to call it marine wire vs normal or automotive, but those are usually what gets called out.
Sometimes you get a claim that the wire jacketing resists oil/gas better than normal, but I'd think automotive wire would do the same?
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Agreed. I usually just use regular wire, but when I put crimp connections on the ends I use non-insulated connectors and stuff them full of solder, then shrink wrap the ends. If you heat the conductor near the insulation you'll get solder back inside the jacket and I've never had any issues.
You'll need to log in to post.
