Headed to Oklahoma

After sitting in a barn for the last year and half or so, the boat is now headed to Oklahoma where work will start in earnest on restoring her. The goal is to have her in the water for the 2015 boating season.

The key areas that need to be addressed are all of the ply wood parts need to be replaced. The transom needs to be replaced and of course all of the upholstery. The overall hull seems to be in pretty good condition. Before any work starts I am going to have one of the local ACBS experts on fiberglass give me his thoughts on the project. Hopefully the answer is that all is well with the hull and we are mainly looking at repairing. The most extensive part of the project will be replacement of the transom as well as replacement of the transom corners. They were lost or failed many years ago and there are only plates there now holding the corners together.

Here are some more pictures of loading her on the trailer. A neighbor used his tractor to tow it out of the barn. Then we put the tongue of the boat trailer onto the flatbed trailer. After that we used the tractor to push the boat into position. Finally the tractor was used to lift the stern of the boat on to the trailer.

June 2013 Update

Since the motor run I have been working on redoing the cowling. The results are still in question. But I will post pictures once I get done. In the mean time I pulled the plugs out of the gear case and water poured out. ARG !!! Got to looking at the drain plugs and realized that I had two washers under it. Called my mechanic and he confirmed that will cause leaks. He said bring it in and he would pressure check it. So took it to him and ran the check. It all checked good so will try again with only one washer.

In the mean time I found a 1961 motor. Started the tear down and rework on it. Will post updates as it comes along.

Engine is Running

After my attempts to get things going without success I pulled the carb and soaked it in cleaner. Then I installed a carb kit and put it all back together. Setup my test tank (just a garbage can full of water) and tried to start it. No fire, no cough, nothing !!! Then I realized the plug wires were not installed on the plugs !! Arg. I installed the wires, hit the key and she fired right up to a nice smooth idle. 

Picture of it running showing my test setup.

Here is some video of it running.

While the engine was running at idle I shifted the motor into both forward and reverse gear. All seemed to work fine there. After the engine run I drained my test tank. The lower unit was covered in exhaust goop. Gear box was ok. Picture of lower unit after test run.

With the test run complete its time to finish up the trim details and start putting all the cowling parts back on the motor.