1992 WellCraft Excel

[92excel]

Welcome to my thread, I could not have done it without the folks in these forums!

This is my new boat the day i picked her up, Exterior will need buffed, polished, and waxed as the gelgoat is in good shape. The trailer will only need the hubs serviced.

The last owner warned me it would need a new deck. It looks like its in good shape until you see the left side windsheild about two inches lower then the right. the support under the console is sagging from rotted supports.

The engine: Looks bad but with a new starter(from iboats volvo store) it ran great.. ill do a tune up and overhaul to make it run even better and look better but never start a rebuild until you know the source of power is good or you are ok with finding another source of power!

The Vinyl: at first inspection it looked really good, but then i put my hand on it when i climbed in and its all dried out and splits very easy! So it will all be replaced with newvinyl so it all matches

If you look in your ski locker and see little bits of wood. you know you are in for some fun.. The deck is so rotted it is just falling to pieces

I knew all these things before i purchased the boat. Actually i underestimated the Volvo 230. i thought it wouldnt even turn over. I used them to talk the guy down to pretty much what the trailer is worth. You should always know as many issues as you can from a survey of the proposed project. Also be aware.. even more suprises are yet to come!

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Step 1 in the project is to remove all the interior.

Back to Back seats are out. You can see the fiberglass delam going on. That is when your fiberglass pulls away from the wood.

This is a closer look at the starboard side of the seat housing..soft and all rot!

The Carpet comes out and you can get a better look at the underlying deck, Here is the deck infront of the engine compartment over the fuel tank. This is a very common place to get a soft spot.

Before I mentioned that the port side console was sagging. The blow photo will give you a better look at why it was that way. The Previous owner attempted to re-support the deck and console by adding support wood and screwing it in place. The screws they added went through the hull.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

I mentioned before that i am going to reupholster all of the vinyl.
The photos below will show that the wood under the vinyl was in pretty bad shape.

Port Console

For the most part the foam is in good shape and reusable. Although, below you can see that the wood stuck to the foam and it will get replaced. Foam is more costly then one might think, so if the foam is dry, mildew free i suggest it

The interior will be getting redone by a local shop. I purchased Exterior Grade 1/2 inch Ply. I cut out all new pieces for the interior by using the old wood for a template.

Before adding the vinyl you will want to seal the wood both sides and all of the edges. You may use a high quality exterior sealer or even better you may use Poly or epoxy resin. Either way 4 coats.

I also drilled holes in the seat bottoms and any areas that the foam may get wet as a way to release the water.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Once All or most of the interior is out then you will want to get ready to begin the gutting process.

BEFORE you begin to gut the boat, TAKE MEASUREMENTS and PHOTOS. Measure everything and write it all down. Take many photos from every possible angle. This will help you when it is time to rebuild.

MAKE SURE that you have all safety equipment before you start.Goggles! protect your eyes, you only get one set! Use a high quality respirator and not a drywall dust mask! Wear long pants and long sleve shirt and thick gloves that you still have grip with. You do not want the grinder to get away from you! Tyvek coveralls are highly recommended to keep all the fiberglass off of your skin which leads to a lot of itching!

Tools..Everyone has their own method when it comes to tools but here is what i used: Drill: unscrewing the interior. Sawzall: for cutting where a circular or jig saw wont work. Circular Saw: set the the deck depth for cutting the deck into managable sections. 4inch and 7 inch grinder: grinding and cutting with a flap disk and cutting wheel. Pry bar: stubborn sections and foam removal.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

The Bow Area before:

The carpet was removed. The fiberglass underneath was delaminating so bad i pulled sections our by hand and the wood was still wet even after months of sitting in the garage.

the foam in all the compartments was saturated with standing water in bottom of the compartments. There were no weeping holes to allow standing water to make it to the bildge.

Bow area gutting progress:

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

The Gutting process is a dirty job. Make sure you are wearing the respirator as you are releasing mold and fiberglass dust into the air!

Here is the bow area ready to be grinded out. Grinded out means that you have got as close the the hull as you feel comfortable with the circular saw. you must now use the flap disk on your grinder and grind out the left over lip until you are at the hull..being careful not to go through the hull.. if that happens it is repairable.

The similar process was used on the entire boat. Cut out manageable sections with your circular saw set to the deck depth and get as close to the edges as your feel comfortable. remove the wood and dig out the foam.
Here is the hull ready to be grinded out.

The Stern:

It is better to remove the engine before gutting as it will only be in your way. As you see here i learned that the hard way.. but it comes out eventually anyways.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Its not a fashion show.. its safety first!
Here is me ready for the grinding step of this project:

I didnt get any photos of the grinding process but it is a pretty intense part of the project. You will have dust everywhere. If you are doing this in a garage attached to your house as i did then i would suggest putting up plastic to contain the dust as much as possible. I was also able to open the garage doors. one on the front and one on the back to have a draft come through.. At times i had an inch of fiberglass dust on the ground.

after every session of grinding i recomend that you try to atleast sweep up the bulk of the dust. Dust yourself off and blow yourself off with a compressor. This helped reduce the itch of the fiberglass dust.

The Hull has be completly ground out except for the engine area

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

It take some time if you are going to order so i suggest you order before you are ready for it. But dont order too far in advance as resin has a self life.

I put in my order for my materials:

15 gallons of 435 Poly Resin and cat
35 YRDS of 1.5 oz Matt (tabbing, used before cloth, capping stringers)
15 YRDS of 1708 Biax (tabbing and structural)
10 YRDS of 8 oz cloth (smooth deck surface)
6 inch fiberglass roller (remove resin bubbles in layups)
corner fiberglass roller (makes inside corner layups easier)

locally i got
mixing/measuring cups
rubber gloves
stirring sticks
disposable paint trays
paint rollers
paint roller covers

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

The engine area as i said above has not been grinded out yet and the engine is still in the boat. Why would that be?

A core sample is when you drill in and through the fiberglass and examine the wood chips that come out to check if the wood is in good shape or not.

When i first did core samples on the transom they came out positive so i thought i lucked out and didnt have to do the transom. Then i did core samples on the motor mounts. The motor mounts were in horrible shape as you will see below. Also later in the post you will see that i did decide to redo the transom while i was at it.

Drilled a hole in the motor mount for core samples:

And Out Came what used to be solid wood: This is closer to potting soil consistency and very wet.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

As you can see in the last post, the engine must come out.

An iboats member RobJ helped me a lot in this process. I was very lucky to find someone that did the exact same boat that i did.Here is an example of what you get from these forums:

Pulling the engine is easy. First thing is to remove the outdrive. Loosen the bellows, remove the shift linkage for the drive, remove the pins for the tilt and trim cylinders, let the skeg of the drive rest on a block of wood, in the down position. On the transom shield you will see the two pins, they are held in place with two allen screws, remove the screws. Now you will need a slide hammer, with a 1/4 inch bolt. Thread the bolt into the hinge pin, and slide hammer the pin out. You should now be able to slide the drive back and remove from teh boat. Once you have removed the drive, remove the 6 (I think) bolts that secure the ring/bell housing to the transom shield. Once that is removed, the rest of the work can be done from inside the boat. You will be removing the engine with the bellhousing intact.

Edit
Forgot one part, after you removed the bellows you also need to remove the steering helmet. Remove the two allen bolts, and then thread 2 - 1/4 inch NC bolts into the other two holes and this will pull that piece out and you can push the helmet back.

Good luck and have a great day,

Rob.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

I highly suggest you get the manual for your engine out drive.. I read through them and they have great instructions on how to remove them from the boat. So with that and RobJ's help i was ready to pull the drive and engine. I have to admit it was one of the things i was nervous about.. but its one of those things..once you do it once you are like. what the heck was i worried about...

I purchased a engine hoist at harbor freight and followed the directions. I was acutally able to remove it all myself. probably easier and less in and out of the boat if you have a helper!

AND Now left with the transom shield:

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

I removed the transom shield, drive pump, bilge pump, bilge switch and all the wire harnesses to get a clean area to work on the transom. The stringers were removed in this area and i began removing the wood from the transom.
As i mentioned earlier, i thought this was solid but it turns out the bottom was soft.

I got the transom area all ground out although as you can see i did leave part of the transom as it was not rotted. It will have a lap joint much like some people do in longer stringer jobs. This was because i chose not to remove the cap.. another idea borrow from from robj.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Building of the transom:

it was time to build the transom. I started off with cardboard to make sure i had all the right angles. Once that was exact, i cut out two matching patterns that will form the transom using 3/4 ext grade ply. It was sanded on both sides to rough it up a bit.

i rolled on some resin on both side that are going to be laminated together:

I let it soak in for about an hour so it would soak into the wood. you dont want the wood to suck the resin out of the glass.. After the wood soaked up the resin another layer of resin was rolled on followed by CSM that was pre-cut using the cardboard transom pattern.

The term wet out means that you apply resin to the fiberglass. you want to apply enough to make the glass translucent using no more or no less then needed. you will also be pressing on the roller to remove the air bubbles.

I wet out the glass and put the two pieces together
I put some screws through the area that i knew would be cut out of the transom and used clamps around the edges. The box have the full 5 gallon buckets of resin in them and will help clamp the two side together. This will sit clamped for 24 hours.

You can see a little of the dust i was talking about on top of the boxes.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

While the transom was left to cure, It was time to remove the stringers.
I chose to remove one stringer and replace it and then remove the next stringer and replace it. My rebuilt is taking place on a bunk trailer which may lend itself the the hull warping if both were removed at the same time.

To remove the old stringers i used my 4 inch grinder with a cutting wheel. i ran it parallel to the hull, as close to the hull as i could. The stringers came out in one piece. The Glass was still somewhat solid but the wood core was mush. Robj supplied me with his measurements from his stringers (see below). So between those and the template stringers I cut out, I was feeling confident that i would be able to cut the new ones correctly. The bottom of the stringers were cut to an angle to mimic the hull shape. This was tricky, but worth the time spent.

I used two pieces of 1/2 inch exterior grade ply laminated together using the same process that was described for the transom.

OK here are the stringer dimensions that I measured. These measurements are fron the top of the floor (deck) to the hull, on the long side of the stringer. I cut my stringer at an angle to better fit the hull. I also reduced the dimensions by 1/2 inch for the deck, and an additional 1/4 inch to allow for the bedding the stringer and glass over the top. All measurements were from the transom.

From 0 to 96 inches 5.25 inches
102'' 5''
108'' 4.75
114'' 4.5
120'' 4.25
126'' 3.5''
132'' 2.5''
138'' 1.5''
144'' 0.5''


The angle was 19 degrees upto 120 inches, afterwards it was 38 Not sure about the very front. These measurements are based on my notes from over a year ago. I would verify them before I started cutting your stringers. I used two pieces of 5/8 inch ply laminated, if I were to do it again I would use two pieces of 1/2 inch ply, laminated.

Good luck and have a great day,

Rob.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Bedding stringers: Unless you cut the stringer exactly to the hull shape and they sit perfectly with not gap anywhere you will need to bed the stringers.

bedding stringers is the process of rasing your new stringer off the hull about 1/4 to 1/2 inch and putting a bedding material under the stringers. The bedding material is not all that important as long as it completly fills the gaps between the new stringer and hull. In essence the bedding material once cured is making your stringer sit perfectly in the hull with no hard spot.

The Stringers were bedded to the hull using PL and tabbed in place.

Tabbing is using strips of fiberglass wet out with resin to hold things in place. Depending on the reason for tabbing you will have different size and weight strips.

The transom was bedded with peanut butter and clamped into place. In the photos below you will see the transom curing and the biax getting cut to length to get ready to glass the stringers into place.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

The stringers will get csm cut to 3 inch followed by a 5 inch widths for initial hold. Then They will get two seperate layups of biax on each side which will give them their strength. The Stringers will then be capped with 3 layers of csm. The caps will again be 3 inch, 5 inch , and 7 inch widths. You always want to increase the overlap to maximize hold.

I added PVC pipes cut in half and glassed through the bulkeads to help in drainage.

Here is the Stringers completely glassed in.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Glassing the transom is much like glassing the stringers. It was tabbed into place with two layers of csm and got a full layer of csm over the entire surface. It will be followed up with biax tabbing and 2 full wraps of biax.

And Here is the transom with the first full biax wrap.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

I Added PVC pipes cut in half from the outer stringer area to the bilge area to allow water to drain out and into the bilge. I did this before the final wrap of the transom as i will glass the pvc pipes in to seal off any unwanted openings.

The Motor mounts Are solid 6 x 6 timbers that were kiln dried and have been drying for a few months in my garage. The were cut to size and the bottoms were cut to match the hull shape. They were soaked with resin and glassed once before they were installed. The Motor mounts were bedded with PL and held in place with SS screws so they wont move while they set up.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

The transom got its last full wrap of 1708. This wrap extended onto the stringers and also sealed up the drains.

The motor mounts were tabbed into place with two layers increasing the overlap by 2 inches. After they cured, I wrapped the motor mount to encase them and the stringers both ways forward and back aswell as port to SB. The motor mounts will be tabbed and wrapped to the deck after it is installed aswell.

 

[92excel]

Re: 1992 WellCraft Excel

Cutting the new deck.

I am using 1/2 inch exterior grade ply for the new deck. It will be doubled up in the ski locker area for extra support. To get the angles and measurements i did the following. I ran a string line from the bow to stern down the middle of the boat. I took measurements every 6 inches along the string line. The measurements were perpendicular to the string line and denoted the length between the string line and the hull. These measurements were transferred onto the ply and the pieces were cut out, test fit and any adjustments were made for the correct fit.