Rough and ready '74 Starcraft Chieftan 18' rebuild

[sprintst]

Re: Rough and ready '74 Starcraft Chieftan 18' rebuild

Both of your rigs will be around for a long time to come.

PS. Any pics of your trout/laker lures and the speed you were trolling at

 

[jbcurt00]

Re: Rough and ready '74 Starcraft Chieftan 18' rebuild

JB - I just saw your name on the hitch, so I was wondering - Not accusing. :smile:

Yep, that's me, I AM the secret trailer hitch mogul.... :facepalm:

Please support my boat habit & buy a hitch fellas, my last royalty check didn't have nearly enough zero's prior to the decimal. This ain't the Matrix, there CAN be more then 1

Nice catch, I had to go look for 'my' logo

 

[laurentide]

Re: Rough and ready '74 Starcraft Chieftan 18' rebuild

JB - I just saw your name on the hitch, so I was wondering - Not accusing. :smile:



You'll drop the seat when you want some cockpit room fighting fish. :joyous:

Are those air shocks or some coil-overs? I added single helper leaves on my Cherokee when I was hauling a heavily loaded UHaul trailer from PA down to GA. Stuck them on in an AutoZone parking lot in the rain. :embarassed: The swaying slowed down enough that I could get back home.

Coil-overs. No change in ride quality but they're variable rate springs, so they firm up with a load. I thought about helper springs, too, but they'd probably bend my old leafs.

Both of your rigs will be around for a long time to come.

PS. Any pics of your trout/laker lures and the speed you were trolling at

Thanks, sprintst. We use small spoons here (speedy shiners work well) and the speed depends on water temp. Right now water is 45-55 on top, so slow...1.8-2.0. Later, when the thermocline sets up, 2.3-2.8 seems to work well.

 

[laurentide]

Re: Rough and ready '74 Starcraft Chieftan 18' rebuild

Welcome back from the ice age CW. The Chief is looking great and like she's close to the finish line :thumb:

Thanks, watermann. I'm following your build closely...it looks fantastic so far. Must be getting close, eh?

 

[laurentide]

Well, at least I get to forget about the mess I made in this thread last week. I'm just going to re-post the pics to maintain continuity in my semi-complete but long-term project on the Chief.

Bonus pic of a salmon I pulled out of the lake the other day:

 

[GA_Boater]

I've seen those pics before - I swear. :smile: Except the final one.

Where exactly do you fish, Chem? I have the clean and cook the ones I catch - yours come out table ready. LOL.

 

[laurentide]

I've seen those pics before - I swear. :smile: Except the final one.

Where exactly do you fish, WM? I have the clean and cook the ones I catch - yours come out table ready. LOL.

Ha, yeah, this was actually the first one I brought home to eat. If they're not injured, back they go...the Admiral is super picky about fish and has a thing about fresh water species. But this one wasn't going to make it, so a bonk to the head and a trip to the grill. Good fish!

I tried to find a couple more this morning, but I got nothing but lakers. There's a rotary tournament this weekend, so it was the closest Champlain gets to "combat" fishing...except that everyone is super friendly and chatty on the horn all day. But, wow, lotta boats out there.

 

[GA_Boater]

The filets looked yummy. Sorry about calling you WM - All these forum setbacks have me confused, Chem.

 

[laurentide]

The filets looked yummy. Sorry about calling you WM - All these forum setbacks have me confused, Chem.

No problem, I knew what you meant .

So, while I realize this is not the place for a site rant, I'll go ahead and say that this was pretty darn poor execution by the IT people at iboats. I know the boards are free, but so are thousands of other forums that work without issue and are likewise supported by ad revenue/clicks. Couldn't this have been done on an offline server to make sure it would work first? Maybe not, but sheesh...this is close to unusable. Now I'll click "post reply" and get another error message.

 

[GA_Boater]

They did test the upgrade on an off-line server, but the user base was small and all these problems appeared after we all came back after the upgrade outage. Honestly I blame VBulletin for not having a smooth transition from version to version. If I was paying to use these forums, I wouldn't be so nice. :mad-new:

At least after the error message after posting, the post is still completed. I'll see in a second.

 

[Weep'n Willy]

Good to see the Chief is into the fish catching mode. You are training her well. The fillets look great and hard to beat fresh caught fish on the grill.

The forum problems have had my head spinning with loss of post and other assorted errors. Keep getting errors when attempting to change pages on a thread but finding the refresh suddenly lets the next page load.....a mystery to me.

 

[laurentide]

Good to see the Chief is into the fish catching mode. You are training her well. The fillets look great and hard to beat fresh caught fish on the grill. The forum problems have had my head spinning with loss of post and other assorted errors. Keep getting errors when attempting to change pages on a thread but finding the refresh suddenly lets the next page load.....a mystery to me.

So it seems like it's safe to post again.... Thanks man. I've been having some great mornings on the chief. Nice weather, light wind, mechanicals are all working as they should. I got a second Evinrude 4hp, a '76 twin to my '69, just to have redundant parts and it was cheap on CL. I didn't do a thing to it but it starts on the second pull every time. So that's my loud, smoky kicker until I find a deal on a two cylinder 4 stroke. You sort of get used to the racket and it's easy on gas. Lakers have been the bite lately...and lampreys all over 'em unfortunately. You're engine looks and sounds great. You must be close, eh?

 

[Weep'n Willy]

Yea, getting pretty close. Getting anxious to get her out as I have been missing out on some great fishing. Limits of walleye out in Saginaw bay and superb steelhead fishing out of my favorite port in LkHuron. The bugs are out in force and the steeliness are cruising the surface gathering them up

 

[laurentide]

Double post...editing is wonky. Please see below

 

[laurentide]

Glad to hear it, Willy. Things are starting to heat up here as well as the temps settle into a pattern. Steelies are pretty rare here, but not unheard of...hopefully I'll get to see one up close this season.

Got me a new lid for the Chief. I have to say that having the top makes a HUGE improvement in my overall enjoyment of being on the water. I've got it set up so I can just stand up under it (6'0") with a few inches to spare. It looks a bit goofy right now, but the plan is to have at least a partial enclosure made by a canvas shop, which will include a raked canvas panel with clear windows from windshield to top and clear side curtains, and possibly a full drop down curtain in the rear if funds allow. The rear curtain will just clear the seats by a few inches.

I had to make some sacrifices in sizing the top. Due to the huge amount of space that the cabin and splashwell take up combined, it had to be a shorty (5') so I can still move rods around in the aft cockpit. Fished it today and was very happy with the setup and sun protection option.

Shade is pretty underrated.

Cheers, guys!

 

[laurentide]

PS: I'm just putting this here because I don't want to bug the already busy mods with a PM request, but if one of you guys see this post could you move my thread over to the Starcraft owner's group forum? Muchas gracias in advance!

 

[Weep'n Willy]

The lid looks great and certainly is a life saver on those hot sunny days spent on the waters trolling.

 

[GA_Boater]

Chem - Your good looking Chief with the new top hat is in it's new home! Carry on in the Starmada Marina.

 

[dozerII]

Nice job on the Bimini install Chem, they sure make a big difference out on the water when the sun is beating down.

 

[laurentide]

Thanks, guys! Special thanks to GA for getting my thread moved over here to where all the cool guys are. I think I left my respirator over in the resto thread!

Anyway, life is good. It's full-on summer here at the 45th parallel: