'79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

A little tip. If you are looking for stainless rigging stuff, like anchor chocks or cleats, I know of a place downriver that has a yard of old boats (400 or so) and you can go out there with your tools and take stuff off them and he'll make you a really, really sweet deal on them. I got all my teak this way (see my thread) and some nice rod holders, a compass, heavy duty cleats, etc. It's a bit of a drive for you, but if you have the time, it's worth it. Lots of good stuff.

Thanks for the info, I know of a place in Coldwater that is similar but haven't checked it out yet. That place downriver sounds like a place I could spend a few hours and make it worth the drive

 

[Bwana Don]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Let me know if you are going, I'll tag along. Do they let in kids? My boy would go nuts over that. A graveyard for boats how cool.

Where downriver is this place?

 

[83mulligan]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

The place is called Checker's Marine. Its in LaSalle. Its kind of a yucky place to walk around depending on how much rain has fallen recently. The boats are just laying outback and it is overgrown with grass and weeds. There are some two tracks cut through it all. Bring bug spray! They have some fierce looking and sounding junkyard dogs, so be sure its open before you go wandering. They also have a whole upstairs loft with parts and pieces that they have salvaged themselves.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

That place may not be the best for the kids with the dobermans or mastiffs or whatever, but it sounds like my boys would love it

Don, I will let you know if I head that way, only an hour and a half probably from Lansing so it's pretty tempting.

I spent the evening working on the boat, I got the two SS flush-mount rod holders installed. They are going to be nice, making it easy to just grab the pole and start reeling in fish when the tip gets that familiar(kind-of) sharp bend to it

I am going to mount the transducer on the Minn Kota like the Lowrance since that way I don't have to drill any thru-hull holes in a hurry to get ready for this weekend.

Since we will be anchored for the majority of the time fishing just off the bottom it should work great.

 

[tdrudd87]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Good luck this weekend, the St Joe is still bankfull in Burlington per the weather channel warnings. Hope you can find the fish thru the choclate milk!

Terry

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

A few photos from the weekend on the big river, St. Joseph.

Our friend has a sweet 18' Lund that is great for the river or the big lake.

I was surprised to learn that the 115hp Honda 4-stroke is actually a Civic block on it's side. He gets around 47mph I believe.

Here is a shot as we enter the cove where the rig was docked all weekend.

Another 16' Starcraft SS(early 70s) was on the river fishing with us too. Very similar to mine and also in the process of a restoration. Very original and in great shape as well.

 

[ts]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Looks like you had a great week-end HA. Those are some great pics.

TS

-

 

[Triton II]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Wow, what a beautiful creek/lagoon. Looks really tranquil. D'ja catch anything?

TII

 

[Shife]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Our friend has a sweet 18' Lund that is great for the river or the big lake.

I was surprised to learn that the 115hp Honda 4-stroke is actually a Civic block on it's side. He gets around 47mph I believe.

Pretty common with the Asian manufacturers. The big Suzuki outboards are built off the 2.7 liter V6 from their pre 2009 Grand Vitara. The valves in both the marine and automotive version of that engine are directly from the Hayabusa.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Thanks ts, we did have a great time and saw some interesting things.

This is a nice healthy carp that we hoped was a walleye

This is a 14" walleye that I caught as soon as we got to this spot, a nice drop off from 12' to 22' right next to the bank, which was a cliff basically.

We were so glad that we finally found a good spot for walleye, the sonar was showing a huge school of fish all stacked up...

And then the sky opened up and dumped water like I've never seen

Here I am staring in amazement. I thought I might see the depth rise on the fish finder as the river since it kept up for an hour or so.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Most importantly, the Mercury 800 decided to run well, spun hub or not, and we had a great time cruising the 9 miles or so between dams.

The Supersport handled great, planed quickly and was a dream to drive up and down the river(when we had gas).

It ran 29mph on the gps fully loaded and planed right down to around 19mph.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Wow, what a beautiful creek/lagoon. Looks really tranquil. D'ja catch anything?

TII

Triton, you are right...this spot is quite nice and I felt lucky to be able to tie up there for free all weekend.

That canal is great, but it was tricky to get past two hazards, one floating log and one tree that fell.

Thanks to the shallow draft of my tinny we barely floated over both and didn't ding any props.

The fishing was lousy, but we had a blast anyhow

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Some more photos of the canal. Pretty nice place to tie a boat up.

We saw this sunken fiberglass boat. Who knows how long this thing has been there.

 

[Triton II]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

The fishing was lousy, but we had a blast anyhow

Excellent... that's what boating is all about.

TII

 

[jasoutside]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

You should have kept that carp, it tastes just like walleye! No seriously, you just need a little extra salt/pepper. Well, and lots of whiskey (for you not the fish).

Looks like you had a great time, rock on!

 

[brobrad]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Looks like an awesome place. It is so serene. The boat is looking great. It is always encouraging seeing someone getting to the "functional" stage in a resto. I plan to get mine together and add the finer details as we move along.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Excellent... that's what boating is all about.

TII

Yeah I hear ya...and also we didn't get too much blood and slime in the rig

You should have kept that carp, it tastes just like walleye! No seriously, you just need a little extra salt/pepper. Well, and lots of whiskey (for you not the fish).

Looks like you had a great time, rock on!

My buddy hates catfish and carp...but he catches tons of them and they always get tossed back. If I had a garden I'd keep some for fertilizer though!

Looks like an awesome place. It is so serene. The boat is looking great. It is always encouraging seeing someone getting to the "functional" stage in a resto. I plan to get mine together and add the finer details as we move along.

Thanks Brad, nice to be on the water but the rig needs a lot of work still. It was nice to use it and find out what is working and what isn't as far as storage and everything.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

A few more things I wanted to share about the weekend trip.

The rig towed smoothly up to 60-70mph, no problems with the trailer except that my transom saver needs a little welding work before I will trust it to hold.

The sleeve that a bolt slides into is cracked and only holding on by 1/8" so I made the decision not to use it.

I looped a rope thru both stern D bolts and wrapped it around the skeg to absorb some of the bouncing and tried to avoid bumps or slow down.

I-94 really isn' the smoothest highway(lots of semis) so we actually took side roads after getting off I-69. This added a couple hours to the drive but we saw some pretty nice country on the way.

The boat still hasn't leaked a drop, it did take on lots of rainwater and I got to use the bilge pump quite a bit.

On saturday night when a tornado was whipping thru I got to head down to the dock at 2am to run the pump...and it was a good thing I did since it ran for about 2 minutes straight.

Man am I glad that the deck is sealed so well because it got put to the test

I'm looking forward to finishing the interior soon, but I'm not sure what to do since we ran out of vinyl halfway thru the job in the bow. I also may want to rethink my storage strategy since the rig is still lacking.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

I forgot to include this photo of a sweet boat house we were fishing near. What a nice way to keep the rig on the water and protected. I wonder if anyone lives on the second floor?

And here's a little video of the rig planed out on the river at about 29mph. There's some adult language in the clip so consider yourself warned

At my height(6'5") I really don't know if I can get the seat low enough to get out of the wind. You can see that I'm getting blasted in the face pretty good but thankfully there weren't many bugs

 

[tdrudd87]

Re: '79 Starcraft SS 16 restoration

Looks like she's running good, nice looking river down that far. I've catfished back in highschool below the dam in Union City, kinda cruddy that far up. Lost a blade on the prop in the lake there too

So what was the haul? Those were some crazy storms Sat!
Terry