The end of the old paint

Another ebay find, 1 and a 1/2 E60 evinrudes.. a nice chap in Airdre sold me these.. A fair bit of work needed.. main unit at the front has a holed piston, other powerhead/casing I think is quite siezed.. all needs to be stripped, cleaned, measured, painted, gaskets and a lot more.. will be a background job for the next few weeks..

A large cork sheet, courtesy of ebay and £10... Will remake gaskets for powerhead from this, just to see if the engine will run ok to begin with.. Useful stuff to have around, glad I got plenty,,,,

Finally, after a few hours pain, the black has gone, and good ridance....

The orange is the old coat and the yellow is the Gelcoat... I think my earlier worries were false..

2 Brand new seats! they are the colour I wanted the boat to end up, near enough! cheap and seem perfect size for a small boat.. will get two more to face backwards.. only thing, I feel very high up in them as they are! The slightly less raked screen may help here, and also I may make the bases tilt back a touch.. any comments on seat height/ person height welcome as I have no idea..

its hard to see.. odd that the orange is in the middle of the sanded area, I thought it was above the light-brown, assuming the orange is the gel coat?

The left over black, peels off in sheets in places.. however, some heavy sanding has gone through black, red, and orange to the colour below, in one small place.. as of tonight most of the black is still on there too.. Couldn't risk painting with such a dark colour left on the boat.. hope I havent made a big error here..

The first ever time I have heard this run....
Problems with the gaskets leaking, causing cooling water and Exhaust to mix, I think..thicker gasket material on way, to see if it fixes problem.. sounds meatier than it does in real life!..


If the screen was made from something solid, it would stand up by itself.. the top is not a curve, but I will modify the diagram to make it one, before the drawing goes off to the plastics factory. I may yet cut a ply version to be sure..

However, when in position, its pretty close.. It may not 'lay back' as much as it could, making it taller, but that may not be a bad thing.. (see above)

A change of tack, i decided to print the screen that a fellow boat owner had given to me as X / Y coordinates... office roll printer very handy :) - this screen was for a shakespeare clubman, slightly different from my boat.. I cut this carefully, leaving the small tranparent polygons at each end of the shape.

The gaskets, paper was too thin for the warpage.. two thick ones would have been better than 4..

Warpage on the engine seal plate.. I did a 40 Mile trip during lunch, to a engineering shop who normally do Headskimming, thinking this would be a walk in the park, they wouldn't touch it :( then I tried hours of rubbing on wet/dry on a flat surface and made little inroads.. in the end I tried doubling up on the gaskets.. its worth pointing out that at this point, the engine had never run (in my possesion)..

the powerhead undertray, for want of a better word..


most of engine on table, a quick clean of the bits in the parts washer followed..


this was hard to turn.. all cleaned and greased, much better (pic is before)


this is the selection problem.. just on the left, where it's blackened, it's very stuck in the casing.. no gears from this point on.. the first job tomorrow is to free that part.. under-use is probably the main cause, but what a dismantle needed to get to all this.. maybe I could have freed it up without the other work, but I didn't know what was in here until now..



I thought this bent selector shaft was causing the selection problem, but it turns ok when back in the casing.. going to ignore it.. the die cast bit will break (more) if I try to straighten, and it's doing no harm really.. (later on I tried to straighten it, but my limited workshop stopped me, it's a lot better now thought)


the snapped bolt.. also shown is the top of the R-N-F selection mechanism.. a long steel rod that runs down, in two peices, all the way through the mid and lower outboard, and nudges/persuades, the cogs below.. this rod is stuck fast in the outboard.. it's finally coming out now.. this whole engine is about things being stuck! so far only two victims, the Powerhead bolt and 1 threaded transom clamp thing.


this view was to see the shape of the gasket needed.. going to be hard to get one, engine is still an unknown model Suzuki 2 stroke twin,estimates vary between 25 and 40 HP, it seems quite old..


I took this pic so I could remember stern throttle position, as I wont have a steeringwheel/forward throttle control, for this boat before testing of the engine begins... sunburnt now :(



lift-off!




A nice sunny saturday and not much else to do.. decided to pull motor apart to see why I cant get neutral or reverse.. I began by carefully removing the casing to powerhead bolts.. these are all 6mm threaded into, I guess, aluminium.. all felt springy and got tighter the more I tried to undo them.. I previously took some time trying to spray them and loosen a bit (the ones I could get to the other end of). Today, I used heat, and I finally just went for it.. all but one came out, the snapped one is no problem to remove.. after that i thought the easy bit was ahead.. taking the powerhead up from the casing...
I tried every nice gentle way for about 3 hours.. completely beaten I rang local boatyards.. I wasn't missing any tricks, 30 + years had welded the engine and casing together!

I gave up the softly approach, and picked the back of the boat up by the powerhead, using my crane, walked away and got a beer, expecting the boat to fall an inch onto the trailer, and the powerhead to be swining in the breeze...

30 mintues later I did what I never thought I would have to.. a huge mallet and a blunt flat driver :(

The gearbox... it's stuck in 'Forwards' but nothing wrong here.. very simple and works perfectly. The gearlever seems to be siezed, high up..to rectify this I think the middle engine case needs to be lowered, but the bolts holding it to engine feel siezed and they are going to snap.. I guess steel and Aluminium.... gave up and went to do some work on the small kawasaki 250, after a 10 month layoff...!

Outboard fuel pump... seems to be fine, gave a clean and will try it again tomorrow. Need a priming bulb to help.. have tried running engine from a gravity fed small tank, but it's flooding despite the float needle being ok..

Rye in a thunderstorm

Next project? :)


neglected small hull


backing a trailer into a high-tide rivermouth, even with a 4x4, can cause problems...




from the slipway




:( 375K, I googled it.. http://www.phillipsandstubbs.co.uk/site/go/viewParticulars?propertyID=89402

Rye Harbour, in a storm...


Decided on a sunny morning, to take a trip to the South coast, down to Rottingdean, to eventually end up at Romney Marsh to grab a boat fuel tank, two waterskis, and a steering wheel... It was a pleasent hot sunny day, ending in a very atmospheric storm.. A nice house for sale almost next to the boat-launch but a few hundred grand out of my range ...

A modern version I guess?... chines and hull dont seem to have changed much...

http://people.dsv.su.se/~klas/Boats/home.html




some naughty people.. 115 hp though..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IJVvjqwcXY

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udzCtL9aYcA

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICGfBq3nVjQ&feature=related

looking better.. I spent the last hour 'flatting' one segment of the upper hull.. its almost shining now with 600 grade.. too shiny for paint I think.. (It seems a previous owner had sanded using a machine, with 60 grade or so.. causing some deep scratches..)

Starting to think this is a shakespear from the late 70's, early 80's... 6'4 by about 13'5"

Buying an old motorboat on ebay

the two hulls I saw... one i brought on left... looks like it had a car stereo once...



The engine that came with.... A 400cc 2 stroke from the 70's/80's.... no idea on HP, at this early stage a wild guess at 30... My old air cooled GT500 Suzi motorbike was a touch more if I remember ...the only number on the head is D23... compression is good. final drive stuck in Forward gear, cant get N or Reverse .. a strip down likely, but engine may be obsolete..




Inside the boat, cut areas of the deck visible (front and along right).. the exterior paint been 'flatted' already..
(I have since learned that the internal deck could be part of the hull structure.I hope it isnt though)





the 'Boathouse' - this is where the boat should spend some time over the coming months




the spares.. bits of the deck, chopped out :( ??? , a battery box, some thick cable, paddles, a large boat cover, the main outer rubber trim.. engine cover etc..






at home.. Xantia TD made easy work really.. boat is not heavy.





The trailer axle as removed 10 miles into the 100 mile journey home.... A call at my friend Jim's house and we set about finding out what was what.... A curbed trailer and a bent axle... we attempted straightening it many times...different methods... in the end it was too tough..(also Seized bolt to the left)...after a couple of hours we surrendered, and twisting it 180° made for a huge improvement. . - the trailer tracked perfectly the rest of the journey home The Offside indicator gave out after about 50 miles.. performing RH turn signals on a busy M25 at 60mph, in the rain, were great :)


The trailer that came with the boat I brought.. a bent stub-axle, bolted to a single transverse leaf spring, caused the trailer to sit about 1/2 a meter to the right when pulling behind the xantia... roundabouts were testing....






I passed on this boat, a fletcher I think.. and went to see/buy the other boat on my list.. in landlocked Milton Keynes... first problem was a trailer that hung out a long way to the right ...




A 'leg'.....useful for getting drive from a motorbike engine, down to and below the waterline...




trailer shown was not an option, free or otherwise


The first boat I went to see..... work needed throughout... basically a £free hull.. the deck and everything else (including engine and trailer) would be required....







Here is a few pics and notes concerning an ebay aqquisition I made in mid May 2009. The original advert was for a boat, an outboard, and a trailer. The boat was an unknown model, and completely bereft of trim, screen, metalwork, seats..
I originally thought of buying a boat because as I have a honda 110hp V4 VFR800 motorcycle engine sitting idle in the shed, needing a home... I have since quickly given up that idea...

On route to buy the boat I visited a boat yard, to see another shell, a very cheap one, and also to chat to thhe owner of the yard to get some ideas..