'76 Holiday i/o 18' Fishing Rebuild (pic heavy!)

[jbcurt00]

Great
Roll it out into the sun while you can

 

[italianstal27]

MORE PROGRESS COMRADES.

Although, it just looks like we're repeating the same thing over and over again -.-

Let the boat sit for 7 days to dry. Paint at this point couldn't be scratched with a fingernail, so we were quite pleased with that. Temps high of 80 and low of 40 over the week. Mostly sitting around 58-62 degrees average.

So we wet sanded with 400 grit in the morning, and boy that paint was HARD. Hardly any came off.

Sanded down every piece of green metal we could find. Did all of it by hand either with the paper wrapped around a small piece of 2x4, or simpy by hand. If the paint came off, we wanted to knock it down real good.

You'll notice we brought the air compressor over. The 125' of hose probably was giving us consistency problems. We thought doing 25' of line might give more pressure and more consistent volume. (Spoilers, it did).



After wet sanding, we washed the boat with dish soap and water.

Then, we sprayed it down REAL good with the hose.

Then after it dried, we wiped it down with 50/50 mineral spirits and acetone. Let that dry.

To speed up the drying (and get the mineral spirits out of the small holes in the rub rail), we blew 90psi air on the boat with the air compressor. Make sure you have an in line oil/water separator!!


Smoking ribs on the smoker while we're working because that's an efficient use of time.


First coat on. Set the compressor to ~55 psi and boy did the paint FLY on there. We only needed 1 cup (roughly 500ml) of paint to cover the entire boat once. And it wasn't a 'thin' coat, but it wasn't thick either.


Wyatt spraying the boat. Watch those isocyanates friends!

At this point, we're done painting the outside. We'll roll the gunnels with the khaki paint (and interior as well) sometime this week or next when we get the final bow piece of deck installed.


On the engine side, finally found where the slave solenoid mounts on this engine. UNDER THE EXHAUST MANIFOLD. Who designs this!?

Also, This is a solenoid which requires the base to be grounded. The two 'signal' nuts are not attached. So I think we may have procured the wrong solenoid.... But! This one should work.

Engine is now completely reassembled minus the 2 bolts for the thermostat.

We've broken 2 bolts putting the engine back together... Home depot doesn't have these bolts in stock either. Maybe ACE?

-John

 

[italianstal27]

Bad news today.
Tried cranking the engine over and it didn't go. The new rotor actually snapped off where it is keyed into the distributor housing. The new cap didn't seem to work either... So back to the old rotor and cap. Got a spark! Sprayed starter fluid into carb and it combusted with backfire. Ok no problem. Add gas and Bam. Nothing. Back to square one tomorrow.

Also curious, how does 12v get to the ignition coil after you're done cranking the starter? On the wiring diagram, the only way to get power to the ignition coil is from the starter R0 port.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

So good news!! We had black exhaust coming out of the j pipe today. Realized that we were actually combusting.

Because we had fuel spitting out the top of the carb, we quadruple checked the distributor cap. Low and behold it had moved 90 degrees on us. Wtf.

So we move the cap 90 degrees, put it roughly 8 degrees behind the rotor, and button it all back up. Now it spins SUPER quick when we crank the starter, but still not kicking over! We were clearly firing wrong before and that was causing the engine to almost stall while cranking.

Guys we can almost taste how close we are!!!!!

 

[jsparks747]

It's looking good! I saw you mentioned Tigard in an earlier post, are you in Oregon?

 

[italianstal27]

OREGON!

 

[italianstal27]

So more updates...

We have tried for a week now to get the engine to turn over and are having extreme difficulties getting it to do anything.

At this point we kinda have to take it to someone who "knows what they're talking about".

sad day... but sometimes you have to know when to call it quits

 

[Watermann]

So the motor turns over with the starter and doesn't fire? If so those older non TB ignitions are super simple with points as long as you have the distributor installed correctly and not 180 out they always will fire off.

 

[italianstal27]

PO upgraded to solid state petronix but yeah having problems

 

[italianstal27]

Glorious news!!!! Engine is running Will post video soon!

Most of our gauges are not working. Tachometer says engine is idling at 4000 rpm. Water temp is all over the place.

Need to order new gauges before we start 'fine tuning" things. Can't really tell if we're at idle speed without it.

Sure sounds like it's idling slower than 1100!!!! Progress!!

 

[Jarcher3]

Congrats! what ended up being the issue?(or issues)

 

[pckeen]

Very good news. Did you have to take it to a mechanic, or did you get this done yourself?

 

[italianstal27]

Distributor was 180 out -.-

We looked at it 3 times and somehow we put it in backwards. Also, our initial timing was 6 degrees ATDC.

Between those 2 factors, we chased a lot of fake issues. If you're having backfire issues etc. bit the bullet and check AGAIN if you're 180 out! Our tachometer isn't working (maybe it's the distributor cap firing twice due to bad contact resistance?) But at idle it says we're at 3000 rpm. I really feel like 3000 rpm is louder than what we're experiencing.

I should upload a video. It seems the way to know if your engine is working is to listen to it!

-John

 

[Watermann]

Hey that's awesome... Yeah yeah video!

Hey I think I remember a page or so back someone saying something about how those motors should fire right off unless the distributor is 180 out. :lol:

 

[italianstal27]

hahaha you don't say

Plan for this weekend is to install bowmost piece of deck, and start building the console.

Once console is all in, we'll start painting the inside.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

When we first started this project, we thought it'd be easy to plow through it for 4 months and get 'er done.

DON'T be fooled friends, sometimes you have to take a 2-3 week break to recharge the engines.

After getting the engine running (2 weeks of work >.<), we finally got back into the boat last night!



Cutting smaller pieces of foam for the bow. We were able to fit 1/2 a sheet of 1" foam in the bow most piece.



Unfortunately, we were only able to get 2 rivets where the bowmost piece touches the piece behind it. The piece didn't sit well on the front most rib and the rivet didn't take

So, now we're rocking 2 rivets holding down the bow. Not our favorite. Hoping that the weight of the stuff on top of it will hold it down. We're considering dropping 2 1" screws on either side in the front with 5200.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

Apparently finish off the deck wasn't big enough news.

Today we were just trucking along, trying to figure out what the next step in the plan was. Maybe work on the wiring, maybe get the second side panel in...

Look at the bow of the boat, see if that needs to be fixed...



Realize it's a lost hope...



Start doing some calculus and differential equations... trying to figure lines out...


Contemplating life decisions...



OUT! OUT! OUT!



Vacuuming all the debris that eventually ends up in the keel preventing drainage causing black mold which kills you...



Coming to terms with this had to be done...



Realizing that none of the templates we have from the exiting boat are going to work. Moving to cardboard to mock up some designs.

Realize cardboard sucks at holding it's shape if it has kinks in it. Spend 2 hours looking at the boat, 20 minutes actually doing stuff. Contemplating that we could have bought a boat and been fishing for Sturgeon now that it's open for retention...



Final mock up for the day. Go grab beers at the pub, realize that we've kinda made this into a super sport, decide to model it after a super sport. 4 hours of trying to get stuff to align properly down the drain.

Comrades, if you're reading this in the future, don't give up. For every 1 good idea you have, you'll have 2 bad ones. But that's ok. Survive.

Until next time amigos!!!

Next step is to get the windshield fixed (the middle panel is smashed and spiderwebbed) Our plan is to get the windshield on the boat, trace out the outline of the windshield on a big piece of plywood, and use that as the piece separating the bow from the console.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

on the windshield, you can see the middle pain is "smashed". So trip to home depot to snag some acrylic glass?



Researching says that the seal holding the glass to the window is called a glaze. We need to pull the edge panes because they popped out of the seal when we were removing the window.

Is this a part that's usually good to go? If it's not completely vulcanized has anyone had issues with just caulking it up?

-John

 

[Watermann]

Having the decking go in is a milestone in my book, things start to really take off after that.

So yeah your thread is in the general resto forum not the SC forum and since you don't venture out and post on the scores of other threads that really limits the subscribers to your thread I'm sorry to say.

So are you going to fabricate some consoles now that the bow deck is gone?

You can use a wet seal for your center WS but polycarb would be my choice over acrylic if you want that sort of material, personally I would go to a glass shop and get a piece of tempered glass, probably cheaper too. Sikaflex works great for wet seals and you can get it in gray so you don't have a white bead of goop showing.

You did buy a boat, just needed a little TLC and elbow grease right? :lol:

 

[italianstal27]

mmmmm should we be posting in the starcraft thread as well??!