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

[Pusher]

Stern Eye hooks in! And yes, it was as miserable as we thought it would be. Key to not blowing out the plywood on the other side is to put a block of plywood over it. It'll prevent the epoxy from exploding on the back side. This really is a 2 man job.



Close up. 5200 on EVERY surface.



Nice. Some holes from the previous owner had corroded badly because they used a vinyl or nylon washer. Guys, do NOT use a plastic between stainless hardware and aluminum.



We added those 2 pieces to Prevent drilling into the transom.

Good call. Since you mentioned it, have you looked into your pitot and transducer connection on the outside transom yet. I 5200'ed Teflon cutting board onto my white transom but WM's aluminum setup might look better on your hull.

 

[italianstal27]

Oooooooooooo watermann deets on the aluminum setup?

There's legit room below the transom plate where we could rivet a bracket on. Has anyone successfully plated over holes on a transom with sheet metal and 5200 in the pin holes? I'll post a pic tomorrow of what we need to.cover up

 

[italianstal27]

More progress!

Wyatt came up with this absolutely brilliant way to support the bow deck. Even free floating there it is ROCK SOLID. We're still debating whether we want to add a piece of deck to extend the second deck further to the bow.... But maybe we'll end up using it as storage for the anchor rope?



Slightly different perspective. You can see how we used 5200 to hold the 1/2" plywood piece to the bow support. The sag is tremendous even only applying 20 lbs of force on it. The reinforcement is completely necessary...



Here's the starboard gunnel support. very nice! We used a c clamp to hold the gunnel deck to the support while it dried.
(having to switch to .png format because it won't let me upload jpegs ughhh)




Here's what it looks like now.... we're thinking of painting it grey. to match the bow support but we'll see. Going to reuse some of the old aluminum trim pieces from earlier to finish it. Maybe in the future we'll upholster these 4" areas?



You can see how much epoxy we threw on this joint. because of how thin the plywood is, we wanted to completely encapsulate the joint to prevent any splitting from occuring. Plus, it'll help with the transition from metal to wood. Making it more seamless. On all the metal surfaces, we sanded with 80 grit sand paper and washed with acetone. The grit should give better adhesion and bonding with the epoxy (although epoxy doesn't seem to bond very well to metal...)



And here's a close up of how we joined the 2 supports together. We cut the edge of the plywood at a 20 degree angle and it matched PERFECTLY.



And here's the before picture. The cleat up there goes behind this new 4" piece of plywood. That was also cut at a 20 degree bevel. So the 4" plywood is epoxied to that cleat which is epoxied and screwed to the grey bow support.

-John

 

[Watermann]

I'd suggest finishing off the decking in the bow, get rid of that broom stick under there and add a bulkhead for support with either an open pass through or a hatch which would create a much larger area for storage.

 

[italianstal27]

Gimbal housing attached and bolted to the transom. I believe from reading the manual it's 20-25 ft lbs torque on the 6 bolts

Then we drop in engine and then attach the 3 shift cables and the steering column ya?

Making progress! Engine may go in today!!!

 

[italianstal27]

So many updates....


Panther 2 stroke 55-0020A

We had to modify it slightly by removing a blue sleve over the stainless bolt, but, the engine now sits as low as it could possibly get! The throttle just barely hits the stern deck. Also, the thing is SO easy to pull up, but requires us to push on it, slightly, to get it all the way down. No problems though. We'd rather push it down than have a tough time pulling it up.



Here's a picture of what our old kicker bracket used to look like:


Talk about SKETCH. So we think this was a blessing in disguise. Had our old one not been stolen, we probably wouldn't have given it a second thought.

As always, copious amounts of 5200 to seal!

 

[italianstal27]

Aaaaand we're back to the manual trying to figure out how the engine attaches to everything. The manual actually has ALL the information you need, it's just not well organized. Also, how did people get anything done with black and white pictures?!



Getting the crane ready...



Wrapping the tree strap around the engine and making sure it doesn't clip any wires...



Cleared the transom!!!! Had to use a bottle jack on the front of the trailer to raise it, but we actually got the engine in!! Before we dropped it in, we should have degreased and regreased the coupler... But we'll have to do that IN the boat now.



Easy does it!



HEY-OOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!



Need to pick up some stainless hardware from ACE tonight to get the 1/2" bolts secured to the engine mount, but we're getting there!!!

Preliminary allignment says we need to lift the front of the engine up. Getting 1/2" of grease on the top of the allignment tool.

Tonight, we'll continue wiring but this is a huge success for us!!!

-John

 

[Watermann]

Won't be long now that you have the iron on the inside. :encouragement:

 

[WinnipegJet91]

Great looking build guys, I thought my boat was a lot of work. Great job.

 

[italianstal27]

Alrighty, so we're really getting after it. May take a day off work to finish wiring. Who knew wiring was going to take so LONG.



Had a thought about the engine wiring. Since we are piecing the 9 conductor together with 3 different cables, I decided that we might as well use a bus. This will allow us to hot swap engines with relative ease. Also, found out the pin inside the female plug for the alternator is gone. Straight up gone. It must have been pulled out when the dash was stolen along with the harness. So instead of running an additional 10 gauge wire to the dash, we're putting a bus in!



Using a beer can inside the vent holes in the gunnel to keep the wires all in one spot. 18 soldered connections can get messy.

 

[italianstal27]

Before soldering, making sure the allignment is correct and the wires are cut to length. The best way to do this is actually attach things with zip ties, cut wire to length, and then cut off the zip ties.



And there's the final install. Took forever. Wire 9 doesn't exist so we'll use that for the fuel tank sender.

3 different colors of wires so we had to ohm out the connections from the block to the engine to determine what wire goes where.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

Getting Closer!!!



Started raining, so we set up a "dirty zone". You take your shoes off on the pink foam, and then step onto the boat deck. keeps everything clean.



Dash in & hydraulic switch attached. Fit PERFECT. Camera angle makes the dash look skewed but when you're sitting down it's straight.



The small 4 wire terminal is for: Manual bilge, automatic bilge, blower, & washdown pump. There is a fifth wire dangling below for the Navigation light. The 10 gauge wire attached to the wire harness is the new wire for the alternator since the plug no longer has a metal contact in it.

A 10th wire will also be added for the fuel sender.



Steering and fuse box installed! Due to unforeseen circumstances, the cable actually makes a small S before going into the conduit. Spec says to not make curves more than 8" in radius. These are such slight curves hopefully it'll be ok.



Here's a better pic of it...



fuse box installed. We drilled it directly into the console with copious amounts of 5200 in the screw holes.

Running wire just takes time. Tonight, we do the interior lighting, batteries, main disconnect switch, and all the negative terminals.

-John

 

[italianstal27]

More bad news. the engine will not allign properly. The engine form suggested that we need to install a new rubber bushing on the rear mount of the flywheel housing. Makes sense. A new bushing will raise the engine up which is the direction the allignment tool says we need to go. We can only her spline marks on the top 1/4" of the tool no matter how we adjust the nut on the front of the boat.

Currently researching if the rear mount kit is the same for the pre alpha as it is for alpha 1. We were planning on upgrading our sterndrive because of how corroded our gimbal housing is.

Overall we shouldn't be surprised we ran into more problems... But still frustrating.

Wiring is going well though!
-John

 

[Watermann]

Did you align the gimbal bearing after smacking it in the hole? If not I'm surprised you got the alignment tool in the coupler.

Run the tool into the coupler until you feel resistance, take a mallet and thump on the sides of the tool, down, up, left & right until the tool goes all the way in. Now adjust alignment.

Also I don't know what you mean by the grease was piled up, its normally rubbed off the tool from rubbing the splines. BUT if it means what I think then you're going the wrong way. If grease is rubbed off top of alignment tool, front of engine is too high. But with the gimbal bearing not aligned it won't move enough to change.

I quit going to the MC forum, guys there are territorial. :lol:

 

[italianstal27]

Ah! We totally forgot to smack it around a little bit!

But we can't get the allignment tool INTO the coupler. It keeps hitting the top of the coupler, so either the gimbal needs to go down, or the back of the engine needs to go up.

Checked the bushings this morning and they are definitely compressed. We're also missing a felt washer.

So ordering a rebuild kit for the bushings and new mounting hardware... $60

 

[Watermann]

Did you make the new front mount the same as the original?

 

[italianstal27]

approximately as close as we could. It had rotted pretty badly. They had used 2 3/4" pieces of plywood, so we used a 2"x8" which is really 1.5" thick.

Going to get the engine hoist back out, lift the back of the engine up, and see if we can get the tool to slide in. Upon inspection though, our bushings were definitely compressed.
-John

 

[italianstal27]

Interior lighting halfway done... the white lights are being finiky. Soldering to the led strip lighting is super difficult and I may have not done it well....



Main disconnect installed + circuit breaker for all the auxillary equipment. Need to add 1 breaker for the alternator and battery wires.



White strip and a red strip for night time.


Held in place with 5200. You can't see it standing up in the boat, but if you get way way down you can see the strips.

 

[italianstal27]

Wells underneath are lit up!



And the interior... Camera does not do a good job of taking pictures with red light wow... But! we're getting there!

 

[Watermann]

Night ops ready, looks pretty darn good to me :thumb:

So like me, do you think there should be some kind of IQ test for previous boat owners before they buy a drill? That inner gunnel 10 holes in one small area! :lol: