1969 Sea Ray Rebuild (and mods) [SPLASHED Sept 2017]

[ezmobee]

Looking good!

 

[proshadetree]

How did you bond the pex? Never had any luck getting resin to stick to composites. Looks great though.

 

[CrazyFinn]

How did you bond the pex? Never had any luck getting resin to stick to composites. Looks great though.

Wasn't too worried about bonding beyond setting it in pb - it's not structural, just provides a passage for water to the brass drain plug fitting, now entirely encased in fibreglass. It's not going anywhere! I just used pex as I had a length of it laying around, and it won't rust or rot.

 

[Patfromny]

Hey Crazyfinn, I'm climbing aboard if you have room. Nice progress so far. I too had problems with garage smells getting into the house. My garage is under my dining room and Kitchen. I sealed every opening with great stuff and it has worked tremendously. I'm not sure if that is an option for you. Since my garage is below the house the ceiling was sheetrocked already and made the great stuff work a lot easier. It still might be worth climbing into the rafters and sealing any opening between the house and garage if you don't have a sheetrock ceiling. Maybe even pull the brick molding off the door and shoot some in there. Be careful if doing that though. Make sure you put only enough in to seal. If too much is used it can bow the door and screw up its operation as well as the door seals. A screen door with storm windows might help as well if you can find one cheap enough. Maybe a used one.

 

[CrazyFinn]

Pat - thanks for the encouragement!

My garage is a flat roofed addition to the side of the back part of the house. So - one wall joins the house, I think it was actually built at the same time as the back part of the house, and my guess is that the vapour barriers and sealing within, and along the top edges of the walls is the issue. The door and frame are recently replaced, good gaskets, foamed in all around the door. It's the rest of the wall that leaks, straight into (apparently) the stairs that lead into the basement, and eventually into the bedrooms of two of my daughters. Judging by how fast the smell travels, I'm now suspecting that is is leaking through the top edge of the wall, down inside the wall, and out of cracks at the top of the foundation walls. Going to try adding some caulking at the top of the garage wall and see if it helps...

 

[CrazyFinn]

Happy New Year everybody!

 

[proshadetree]

Happy New Year , may in be full of blessing and cheer

 

[CrazyFinn]

Now that the new transom is in, need to move on to figuring out the actual condition of the stringers. They have been replaced sometime in the past, and the front section is dry, but at least the back two feet are wet - when they replaced and glassed in the stringers, they then drilled a one inch hole through each stringer about a foot from the transom to allow water to drain to the bilge, and apparently to soak into the stringers. I have already cut the last 10" of the stringers out to replace the transom.

Before I do more to the stringers, I decided to rebuild the trailer to make sure it's supporting the boat properly... so that's what I started on today.. what I discovered was "interesting". Sure glad I'm rebuilding it all!

 

[CrazyFinn]

So... when I picked up the boat and trailer, I noticed that the trailer, although solid, and the frame was in good condition, was built for a shorter boat. Sometime in the past, a previous owner had installed longer bunks (made out of carpeted pressure treated 2x6's) to reach the back of the boat. Problem is, there was NO actual support for the last 32" of bunk, effectively creating a pressure point on the hull 32" forward of the transom. I decided to extend the trailer frame to add support for the rear portion of the bunks. The trailer frame extension is easy - some 3" square steel tubing and the welder will take care of that. Picked up the needed tubing on Thursday, started the welding yesterday (after lifting the boat up off of the trailer and removing bunks, rollers, etc).

The centre rollers are old, dried, cracked, and seized solid. They will be replaced, and a new roller added at the "new" rear of the trailer.

The old bunks were - interesting. For some reason, when they wrapped the carpet around the bunks, they put the seam, and the staples, on the TOP of the bunk, so that the rusty staples were against the hull. Brilliant. One bunk was bolted to the brackets with rusty carriage bolts. The other bunk was attached with brass toilet bolts. At least they didn't rust...

 

[mickyryan]

ahh yes got to love when folks do silly things , hope staples didn't scratch ya gelcoat all up

 

[Patfromny]

In High School, I used to work for a guy who would sell Firebird and Camara parts. I tore hundreds of parts cars apart and boy some of the ideas you'd find. We used to call the tinkering previous owners "mad scientists ".

 

[CrazyFinn]

ahh yes got to love when folks do silly things , hope staples didn't scratch ya gelcoat all up

The bottom of the boat isn't beautiful to start with - it's been painted with some type of antifouling paint at some point, but no serious damage as far as I can tell. The staples were kind of buried in the carpeting, so I don't think they made much contact.

Who knows what kind of life this boat has had in the past 48 years. When I look at the side at an angle, I can make out part of an old NY registration number (the gelcoat has more shine where the numbers were). So it was originally a US registered boat before being brought to Canada.

 

[CrazyFinn]

In High School, I used to work for a guy who would sell Firebird and Camara parts. I tore hundreds of parts cars apart and boy some of the ideas you'd find. We used to call the tinkering previous owners "mad scientists ".

There are good mad scientists. And some that shouldn't be experimenting at all... I've seen some of the crazy things that people have tried on some old Jeeps and trucks that I've pulled apart over the years. I also saw some really bad experimenting on some pretty fast race boats - those usually didn't end well, and sometimes they got the boat back to the trailer before it started to sink. Like the time some poor fibreglass work caused the entire rear of a sponson on a F2 composite tunnel hull to open up like a hinged door... (the mad scientist had shortened the hull of a F1 boat to compete in a lower class - his glass work was somewhat lacking). I was one of the people who happened to be nearby, jumped in the water to support the thing until they could get the trailer under the boat.

 

[Patfromny]

I agree Crazyfinn, but I'd call the good mad scientists innovators. Mad scientists to me, will always be a negative connotation.

 

[CrazyFinn]

Gotta admit - the last time I set up a boat trailer was many years ago, for a lightweight tunnel hull race boat with an outboard that had the prop shaft roughly even with the lowest point of the hull. We used to haul it with the trim all the way down (if the lower unit was still attached - we often removed it after a race), it was no where close to touching the ground. Obviously, this boat is a different beast.

 

[CrazyFinn]

Haven't had a whole pile of time to work on it in the past couple of weeks, but we did manage to lengthen the trailer frame 32" to provide more support for the bunks. Need to get the new bunks in before I cut out more of the stringers. Meanwhile, the outside of the transom is looking MUCH better.

This is what it started out like:

And now:

 

[mickyryan]

nice! my god they had gunked a ton of crap around that huh?

 

[CrazyFinn]

nice! my god they had gunked a ton of crap around that huh?

It was certainly an interesting mess. Once I removed the drive, there was really no choice but to rebuild it all. Somehow, they had a Mercruiser drive clamped in that hole. The bolts didn't even have "bolt holes", they just went through the big hole with everything else. The drive barely covered the opening. I'm just glad nobody got around to trying to launch the thing with it installed like that.

That bigger round "hole" at the upper right (in the first picture) was just a great big plug of white silicone.

 

[CrazyFinn]

Didn't get much done on the boat this weekend other than a bit of work on the new bunks for the trailer Friday night. Had to work Saturday, transport my daughters various places Sunday morning, and then went to the Toronto Boat Show Sunday afternoon. Seeing the prices on the new boats is good inspiration for working on my boat!

Judging from the boats that my wife was most drawn to, I might just have to find a bigger cruiser to restore after I get this one done... She has already pretty much approved of the idea...

 

[proshadetree]

My wife loves boating also. Bought a cruiser but had a houseboat before I even got the cruiser in the water. Progress looks great.