rebuilt aero-craft coho

[cougar1985]

just finished rebuilding my aul. 17 1/2 foot boat.transom was toast,as was 1/2 the floor and the foam was soaked.decide to try something differnt and instead of using the regular foam out there i filled the bottom of the boat with those water noodes that you get at walmart and the likes.they dont soak up water easily and are easy to work with.also cheap.each noodle will hole up a 100 pound person and i have 35 or so in the boat.it has the added benifit of if you sink and breaak apat close to a beach the kids thier will have a ball,lol.iknow several people who have used them on canoes with great sucess,so i decide to experiment and take it one step further.it was quite the job to do the transom as it was a not done very well from the manufactuer as far as im concerned.there was a bottom piece and a top piece of laminated wood ,strange way to do it you think they would of had just one piece of full height laminated .will post resultes of the madian voyage later and some picks of the job.

 

[reelfishin]

Re: rebuilt aero-craft coho

I am curious to see a pic of your Aero Craft boat. I just picked up an older Aero-Craft 17.5' with a 50 Chrysler on it. This boat has no foam, but has sealed air chambers built into the gunwales on each side. The transom wood is only a small piece of 2x lumber that fills tha upper area of the transom that is formed by the upper deck portion of the boat. The wood can be removed fairly easily, it's only lightly glassed in with a few strips of glass and resin. The lower transom appears to be either all glass. The floor is the same, the rear floor is only about 3/4" thick with no signs of any stringers. The only wood I found is one 2x strip runing partway down the front of the inner keel about 26" and a plywood filler panel which flattens the inner floor between the forward trihulls.
Mine is the only one I've seen so far, other than a brochure for a 16' version at Fiberglassics.com.

I like the idea of the foam noodles, they will last longer than blown in foam and should stay dry. I am working on an older aluminum boat in which I plan to use soda bottles. When I lifted the floor out of that, it was filled with packing peanuts that had been soaked for years since it was a boat that sat open at a dock for most of it's life. The owner sold it to me saying that it didn't have enough freeboard for his liking. If he would have removed the 400 pounds of soaking wet packing peanuts and wet wood and carpet it would have been fine.

 

[cougar1985]

Re: rebuilt aero-craft coho

heres a pic before i tore it apart

 

[cougar1985]

Re: rebuilt aero-craft coho

tearing apart.

 

[cougar1985]

Re: rebuilt aero-craft coho