Restoration in progress

B

bigredinohio

Member
I removed some more rotted core while standing on my head today. It has to be the best thing to do when not watching football...NOT! Anyways, it had to be done and here are some pictures of the core removed and hopefully I will have it replaced later this week.

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K

kytekeith

New Member
I love those old towers, Are you leaving that on the boat?
When they came out with the thunderbolt ignition power was added.
 
K

kytekeith

New Member
After lookiing again I think i have mistaken the year of those mercs. What year are they and the checkmate?

Whan i was a kid in the 70's i watched and dreamed of having a Checkmate ,Baja , and Carlson /glasstron. Now a few boats later I Bought a 79 Carlson with a 115 merc. and thought i was in heaven. The wood started to go away, lost a cylinder ,And practicaly gave it away because I didn't want to do what you are doing now. The next day I came across a 76 Hydrostream Vector with a merc on it and just had to have it.(couldn't be boatless for one day, sad huh?) I looked it over and thought it was solid., found out later i was wrong. This time I didn't give up, in process of recoring now.

keep up the good work . look good . love it when someone brings back one of my old dream boats!!

:cheers:

How do you post pics from my library??
 
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S

Sinbad's Mom

Member
Wow!! And to think I'm proud of myself when I refinish an old dresser.
Congratulations on excellent workmanship, artistry and patience...something to be truly proud of.
:cheers:
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
kytekeith said:
After lookiing again I think i have mistaken the year of those mercs. What year are they and the checkmate?

Whan i was a kid in the 70's i watched and dreamed of having a Checkmate ,Baja , and Carlson /glasstron. Now a few boats later I Bought a 79 Carlson with a 115 merc. and thought i was in heaven. The wood started to go away, lost a cylinder ,And practicaly gave it away because I didn't want to do what you are doing now. The next day I came across a 76 Hydrostream Vector with a merc on it and just had to have it.(couldn't be boatless for one day, sad huh?) I looked it over and thought it was solid., found out later i was wrong. This time I didn't give up, in process of recoring now.

keep up the good work . look good . love it when someone brings back one of my old dream boats!!

:cheers:

How do you post pics from my library??
Click to expand...

I apologize for not being on here as of late. With the weather cold, I haven't had much of an opportunity to do much work on the boat so I come and go with less regularity.

I'm glad you're doing a restore on the Hydro. I think it's much more rewarding and you gain a better appreciation for boats and those who make them. Be sure to take lots of pictures and document the progress in a thread...I'll look and see if you've started one.

The boat is a 1975 V-Mate II and the motor that came with it is a 1972-73 Mercury 150 Tower of Power (TOP). That motor is some what rough so I bought a Siverline Trihaul with a 1977 Merc TOP which will eventually be the motor on the Checkmate. The '73 motor will either be rebuilt or used as a parts motor.

As for posting pictures, I upload my pics to photobucket then use the insert pictures button to post the pic link.
 
Chris

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
Good to see you back around b.r.o. I was wondering what you were up to. :)

-Chris
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
Chris said:
Good to see you back around b.r.o. I was wondering what you were up to. :)

-Chris
Click to expand...

I've been trying to kill Bambi for the better part of winter but have been unsuccessful :yell: so now it's just a matter of staying warm.

How has your winter been up north? Hope the family is doing well!
 
Chris

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
bigredinohio said:
I've been trying to kill Bambi for the better part of winter but have been unsuccessful :yell: so now it's just a matter of staying warm.

How has your winter been up north? Hope the family is doing well!
Click to expand...
The winter around Toronto has been pretty tame. :)

Hopefully the snow levels will stay fairly low so we can get back to cottaging and boating early this year. :thumb:

-Chris
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
The weather has been getting warmer and I'm getting my motivation going again. I ordered some fiberglassing materials last Friday from U.S. Composites to finish up the last of the core repair. I also ordered poly resin which I haven't worked much with but it will be exciting. I bought some CSM and Woven Roven to rebuild the spashwell, fabricate a solid fiberglass windshield and to patch unwanted holes such as in the dash and around inside the interior.

Shopping list was:
3 gallons of epoxy
2 gallons of poly
2 containers of cabosil
1 container of 3M Glass bubbles
3 yards of WR
9 yards of CSM

Also, I've been tinkering with my old outboard (my back up motor) that went with the Checkmate. I stopped by a Mercury dealer and bought some goodies for the other motor but I've been itching to mess with this one. I purchased lower unit oil, fogging oil, 2 stoke oil, carb repair kit, water pump kit and some other misc. items. The past couple of days, I've been working on taping up bare wires in my external wire harness and stator wires. I also removed each spark plug and sprayed a little fogging oil into each cylinder and turned the flywheel by hand to coat each wall. Today, I decided to fire it up and but the starter acted up. The starter would spin in place and not engage the flywheel. I ended up taking a screw driver and freed the starter and sprayed a little lube onto the shaft.

I must of done something wrong...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41FfOkV2yRk

IT STARTED!!!

The motor still needs some attention. I still need to do a compression test so I'm not wasting too much time and money into this thing. Gas did gush out of the carbs when I pumped the bulb so they'll probably need rebuilt. I'd like to replace the water pump and replace all bad wires.

Now I just hope the motor that I do intend to use starts up with no problems and passes the compression test.
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
Today, I got to pull the boat out and get some work done on it. The first thing I did was to pop the cap back off so I could do some trimming and sanding. I stribed a line where the spashwell was hanging up on the transom to allow for a better fit.

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Finished cutting using my dremel tool w/ reinforced cutting wheel

Afterwards, I sanded the gelcoat and metal flake off down to actual fiberglass. When I start to rebuild the splashwell, I'll need this so I can adhere the new layup to.

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Bottom of spashwell sanded

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When I bought this boat, they had the steering coming from the hole in the right. I didn't pay any attention if I could use the factory hole but I'm thinking of going ahead and patching that hole and if I need it, I'll simply drill a new one.

Lastly, I removed the last of my bad core...FINALLY! It was a real pain even with the cap slid forward for easier access. I hope either tonight or tomorrow that I can go ahead and epoxy the new core in and hopefully lay some glass over the repair area. If I ever have to do core repair in my lifetime, it will be too soon.

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No more black rotted core

All in all, it's been a pretty good week! :cheers:
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
Did some more work today. I cranked on all the heaters this morning until my garage was about 90 degrees. With all the bad core now removed, I set the new in and now my core repair is finally complete.

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Since I had time to kill today, I finally got around to scraping the adhesive/sealer off of the hall that seals the cap to the hall. I ended up using some carb cleaner with a kitchen scratch pad to get the remaining bits off. After that, I decided that I'm most likely going to redo my dash completely so I made some plugs to fill in some holes using some 3/4" plywood. I still need to do some work with the big hole but I didn't want to mess with cutting into the dash and making a mess on my core repair. They aren't the prettiest but after they are glued in and glassed over, you'll never know there were any holes.

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This evening I mixed up some pb and filled in all the gaps around the core.

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Tomorrow with weather permitting, I will sand and lay a layer of cloth glass over the
two upper sections.
 
Chris

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
Looking good B.R.O. it's coming along!

Thanks for sharing, it's fun following along, so keep 'em coming. :)

-Chris
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
Today, I glassed over the repair forward repair area.

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Not to worry, there was excess glass that didn't need wetted out. It will get sanded off.

Then I took 1708 and covered the entire back section stopping short of the new glassing in the front. I will let everything set up and cure then I will sand the front and just enough of the 1708 that I laid today to overlap when I blanket the front section with 1708. Then I'll be ready to install the stringer. :bounce:

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Rollling out 1708. I really wanted to flip it and have the csm up and the biax cloth down but I was afraid that the stitching might cause a bonding issue.

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Trimming around the tabs with an exacto knife

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1708 drinking up the resin

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Working with this stuff is a job to wet out

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I used a 2x4 to help reach them hard to reach places
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
I finished glassing the forward core repair with 1708 yesterday. My core repair is officially over, unless there is an issue down the road.

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Today, I trimmed my stringer (or floor support if you like) and it's finally in the boat. The process I used was simple to get the original height. First, I scribed the bottom where it seemed a little high then I cut a line down where the tabs of the original floor are. This allowed me to pull a string from one tab acoss through the line I cut to the other tab to get my height. I did this for the front, middle and rear section of the stringer then ran a chalk line across all three marks then used a circular saw to cut a nice straight line.

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Afterwards, I bedded it in place using PL Premium.

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Once in place, I used 2x4's weighted down with some concrete block to hold in place so I could make sure it was centered as best as it could be then ran a bead of PL down the edge to do fillets.

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B

bigredinohio

Member
Chris said:
It's really coming along. :thumb:

Is the glass mat making you itchy?

I ask as you're working in shorts. :eek: :)

-Chris
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris! I've been trying to make some progress lately.

I don't have any itch problems from working with new fiberglass. It's the fiberglass dust from sanding the already cured glass that makes me itch. :yikes:
 
B

bigredinohio

Member
I decided to take a trip down to my folks where I have my other boat stored just to work on the other motor. After a little tinkering with taping some bad wires that will need replaced and checking the plugs, it started right up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbMQCikKX7Y

I didn't hook up any of the other wires to the battery so I didn't have it trimmed down all the way. Because of this, I noticed some gas dripping from the middle carb while it was running which is kind of hard to see in the video. I wonder if this is normal or not with these old motors? I'll most likely will have the carbs rebuilt this fall.

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