Re: '59 Texas Maid 14' Resto Project
Well, much has happened since I posted a week ago. I took the '59 Maid on her maiden voyage last Thursday. End result ... huge success! Although, there were a few minor hiccups along the way.
Last Wednesday, my dad came over and helped me install the '59 Evinrude Lark 35hp and controls. The throttle and forward/reverse controls went in pretty easily, as did the electric start and electric choke. The steering controls, on the other hand, took about half a day to get installed. The retro-fitted block clamp for the steering support tube worked perfectly, there just wasn't enough room when we mounted it in the splash well to tilt the motor up without violating the partial cover that is over said splash well. Long story short, I turned the block clamp bracket upside down and even with a pretty extreme angle from the support tube to the motor bracket, the steering seemed to work fine, even if we did lose some range on full right or left turns. My concern was it wouldn't allow me to turn sharp enough when I was trying to maneuver around the boat ramp. I will post pics to give a better idea about what I'm talking about in case I didn't explain it well enough.
In any case, we finished getting everything installed and took her for the splash test on Thursday afternoon. Right on schedule, which is an unbelievable feat in its own right.
I was so excited to test her out, we got to the boat ramp and were about to put her in when I realized that we hadn't stopped to get gas. :redface: How embarrassing ... We made a u-turn, went to the nearest gas station and we were back in business. We dumped her in the water, pumped the primer bulb and she fired right up. The electric ignition and electric choke worked like a charm. After letting her warm up for about five minutes, she died and wouldn't start back up. We pulled the cowling and started looking for problems.
My dad thought she might have gotten hot, and wanted to take her home and pull the lower unit to look at the impeller. I told him it was new, and that it seemed more like a fuel issue. For the first time in my memory, I was right. I pumped the primer bulb one time to see if there might have been some air in the line, and much to the chagrin of the two 'ladies' putting their electric powered canoe in next to us, a stream of gas squirted right out the port side of the motor into the lake. There was one piece of fuel line that I hadn't replaced. And, of course, it busted when we put a little pressure to it. It looked good/new and was soft when I squeezed it, but as it turned out, was so bad it snapped in two with almost no effort when I took it off and tried to bend it. Fortunately, I had some extra fuel hose and we got it replaced and about five minutes later, she was purring like a kitten. Side note: when replacing hoses, do yourself a favor and replace all of them, no matter how new they look. It will save you time and frustration later.
We eased her away from the ramp and idled around for a few minutes. The low speed idle was perfect, but when I opened her up, she died. After a few adjustments to the high speed, she was running like a champ. The old 35 hp planed her off with three adults and a child in less than four seconds. Altogether, about 575 lbs. I was a little worried that I didn't have enough motor and that the pitch on my prop was too extreme for the altitude here in Denver, but those fears proved to be unfounded.
We had to cut the test short because I saw the local Gestapo ... errr, coast guard inspecting every boat they passed. I had forgotten to grab the fire extinguisher from my other boat and left my whistle in my tackle box, which I didn't bring since we weren't going to be fishing. We ran for about 20 minutes, and I was thrilled with the way the motor ran and the steering was great. She turns plenty sharp. As a matter of fact, I don't think I would need her to turn any sharper, especially running WOT.
She ran so good, I took her up to the mountains and camped all weekend. I'll post more on that with some pictures of a few of the 'upgrades' I did to her while we were up there.
Here's a picture from my cell phone yesterday morning at Twin Lakes up in the high country (between Leadville and Buena Vista).
