1979 18' Starcraft SuperSport Restoration

[jbcurt00]

Actually, I think SmokerCraft owns tbe other brands, not the other way around:

applies to all Smoker Craft?s line of products, including Starcraft, Smoker Craft, Sylvan, SunChaser, American Angler and Starweld.

 

[USMotorHead]

Actually, I think SmokerCraft owns tbe other brands, not the other way around:

From Wiki:
Starcraft was founded in 1903 by Arthur E. Schrock in the rural town of Goshen, Indiana. In 1969, Bangor Punta purchased Starcraft and it grew to over 700 employees. Bangor Punta would become the first of five parties to own Starcraft. In 1980, they moved from Goshen to Topeka, Indiana. In the late 80s, Starcraft became part of the Brunswick family of companies, which included Mercury Marine.[SUP][1][/SUP] In 1996 Brunswick Corporation decided to divest itself of Starcraft. Doug Schrock, the son of Harold Schrock who had sold Starcraft, purchased Starcraft Boats. Starcraft's recreational vehicle business was sold to Jayco in the 1990s. Starcraft Marine is now part of the Smoker Craft family of boats based in New Paris, Indiana.

 

[mbroughton02]

Question: I want to strip all the paint off of this boat. I thought I read on here somewhere that the bare aluminum would start corroding immediately if I don't prime it right away? Am I making that up? Here is my planned order of events for the next few steps, please let me know if anything seems amiss:

1) Clean up both sides of transom skin. It has all kinds of crap stuck to it. Basically I will get it to bare aluminum.
2) Check for any leaks. Replace any rivets necessary. Gluvit anything leaking or any found cracks. Or does one Gluvit the entire inside of the hull? Sorry for newbie questions.
3) Remove old bimimi slides and bow cover brackets.
4) Strip paint from everything I can reach before flipping it over. Remove old carpet adhesive.
5) Fill / repair any unneeded holes.
6) Flip. QUESTION: Do I need to reinstall transom before flipping? For structural reasons?
7) Strip bottom
8) Keel damage repair
9) Prime & paint bottom
10) Flip
11) Install flotation and new floor
12) Prime and paint top

Honestly from step 4 to step 12 will likely be several months. Is that going to be a problem as far as corrosion?

 

[Watermann]

AL won't corrode unless there's something dissimilar in contact with it and wet. Even then it would take years. I think your talking about oxidization which begins after the AL is cleaned. The process is just the AL turning gray rather than having a shine.

 

[mbroughton02]

No Title

Scored this 18 gallon gas tank on Craigslist for $20! Working fuel sender and new pickup too.

 

[mbroughton02]

Today was cloudy and cool, but not cold. Perfect weather for stripping paint.

This was after one application of Jasco Premium Paint and Epoxy Remover. It worked exceptionally well, and fast.

What you see only took me a little over an hour. Next pass took about another hour. No pic yet but the paint is 95% gone. I'll have to do one more touch-up pass, but honestly I expected it to be worse. Very little scrubbing involved.

 

[Watermann]

Yeah that Jasco stuff is super good stripper. Jeez that SC green primer stuff torques me at how tough it is. I think it's some sort of alodine treatment.

Alodine is an international brand name for Henkel Technologies' conversion, anodizing and functional coatings suitable for use on aluminum, magnesium and other non-ferrous alloys. These coatings provide improved corrosion protection and paint adhesion.

 

[mbroughton02]

Finished the port side today:

And the transom skin. Some pretty significant pitting going on

Starboard side is about halfway there.

 

[Watermann]

There's a whole bunch of work behind you, looking good :encouragement:

 

[mbroughton02]

Work got busy, so I took a few weeks off. Back at it now, though.

I got the boat flipped over and stripped the paint and marine tex from the area with the keel damage. Here's what I'm looking at:

A friend of mine owns a big metal fabrication shop and he's going to look at it next week. In the meantime, thoughts from the starmada?

 

[blazin_jason]

I have a similar issue on a little 11' starcraft I got. I'm just going to weld in some round stock similar in diameter to the bad areas.

 

[Watermann]

Amazing the abuse these old boat take over the years. You can patch cover that mess with new material like classiccat did with his SS keel strip.

 

[classiccat]

I got the boat flipped over and stripped the paint and marine tex from the area with the keel damage. Here's what I'm looking at:

A friend of mine owns a big metal fabrication shop and he's going to look at it next week. In the meantime, thoughts from the starmada?

I love it when you guys come around ...just to make me feel good about my hot-mess of a tinnie Thanks Man! :thumb:

My keel strip fought a losing battle against a steel roller shaft.

Here's how I formed the patch.

Keep us posted on how your buddy tackles this one.

 

[mbroughton02]

Ok so my buddy had one of his welders put in some new plating for the keel damage. He did not charge me. It's awesome to have great friends:

Next question- I have several spots where it seems the hull was dented / scratched and repaired. I do not know if this is marine tex but the outermost layer is almost vinyl-like, and the paint stripper will not touch it. The repairs were undetectable before I stripped the rest of the paint, but now I need to deal with them:

Here's a huge one:

And this is where there was a huge one, and I removed everything with a heat gun:

So, I guess my question is do I take the heat gun to the rest of the spots and get down to bare aluminum, and then redo the repairs with marine tex? Or do I attempt to sand the edge so that the repaired area feathers out to the aluminum and then just repaint? Other ideas?

 

[Watermann]

Hey that looks a nice solid keel repair.

If that epoxy they used to fill the dents is not failing then personally I would not go through the trouble of removing it and replacing.

 

[mbroughton02]

Did I mention I'm slow? Summer has been busy at work, but the paint is 100% stripped, and I am finishing up several marine tex repairs on the sides and transom:

Before I flipped it I did a leak test and marked all the leaky rivets. My brother came over and we replaced a handful and rebucked quite a few- I would say between 100-200. It was loud and the neighbor behind me was not happy!

So now my options are these:

A) Leave the boat upside down, prep, paint, flip, gluvit, prep, paint topsides.
B) Flip, gluvit, flip, prep, paint, flip, paint topsides.

The flipping is not easy because I honestly don't have many friends who are physically capable of helping with that, but if I need to gluvit before painting the bottom, I will do it. What do you all think?

 

[g0nef1sshn]

Naked lady!! Nice work!

What i woul do is gluvit inside, flip, redo leak test, fix missed spots if any, flip final leak test, flip, make bottom how you want it, flip, finish the rest!

 

[Watermann]

Since you've already flipped the boat and are going to paint the bottom then I would go ahead with the painting. It's not a good idea flipping the boat over again after you use the gluvit as it can torque the boat enough to crack the gluvit you applied and that would suck. My vote is option 1.

 

[mbroughton02]

Thanks for the tips. I think I will paint the bottom and sides first. Gluvit was expensive, so I wouldn't want to risk ruining it.

Got the bow cap off tonight. Not fun but doable thanks to the advice on this forum. Then I took the rub rail inserts out. Will visit dealer soon to see about ordering new insert.

 

[Watermann]

Dealer for the vinyl rub rail insert?

You have to call them to order but most of us order profile 0101 G from Wefco rubber