Sunset's motto on boats:

"Happy when he bought it, happy when he sold it."

Good points, but, respectfully, I do believe that the stringers and the transom on a 17-19'vintage boat are more important than the wires. You can always run new wires...

Dry storage history is VERY important IMO.


I've owned a few.

Boat paint is very very similar to auto paint in how it is prepped and sprayed. Can also use auto paint, IMRON used to be very popular on boats. Now, Awlgrip.

If you want to just clear coat it to retain the metal flake or whatever it has, you're going to have to wet sand it and SPRAY it with clear coat.

If you want to repaint the entire thing, then you can roll and tip awlgrip (roller and brush), Awlgrip makes special reducer and catalyst for brushing and a different set for spraying. The key is reducing it enough and using a slow enough reducer that it levels itself out as it dries. I would use their primer first before awlgripping. Prep is EVERYTHING. With Awlgrip you NEVER wax it or do anything to it to maintain the finish, but for longevity using the Awlwash soap extends the life and shine a long time. They also make awl-care which does work sort of like a wax but not necessary to use it. The Awlgrip products are not cheap......but probably equivalent in price to the better quality automotive paints.

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
As a guy who has owned two "project boats" (and currently still has one of them), they are nothing but a hole in the water into which you throw money - assuming they even get to the water!

Do follow the advice above about the stringers and transom. Be certain to get marine carpet, regular indoor/outdoor won't hold up to marine abuse.

Go over the wiring very well, and anything that needs replaced should be soldered/heat shrinked, not butt spliced.

Also, are you sure on the model number and length? The only 154 I can find is an HP 154, and it was 15', not 17'.

In any event, you'll likely end up having some fiberglass repairs to do. It really isn't difficult (I ventured into this last fall myself). There are some really good youtube videos out there. Just take your time, and make sure you have the right tools & materials for the job.

I own a Yacht Management business in Fort Lauderdale managing/maintain 10 yachts and have done so since around 2003, but been in the business since around 1998. I am heavily involved in the marine industry with the top yacht builders, engineers, and surveyors.

The only wiring that should be soldered and heat shrinked should be very very small gauge wiring such as 22 gauge and smaller.

ABYC standards- heatshrink butt connectors would be the preferred method of joining or terminating wires (heat shrink crimped terminal ends).


ALSO some corrections-

whoever said that a surveyor drills tiny holes in the stringers to check moisture content. You NEVER drill holes in the stringers, EVER. Unless, you absolutely have to in order to mount a piece of equipment. Moisture is determined with a thermal imaging camera (preferred method) but also a cheap moisture meter for houses found at home depot works pretty well too. You will get a moisture reading on every inch of fiberglass on a boat.....Usually 10% +/-, what you want to look for are any spikes, like if you see 20% in an area of the transom or floor.

Also as for the foam stringers on newer boats, the foam coring by itself is not very strong. Let's say a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" thick sheet of divinicyl, by itself you can bend it in half with a little. However, once you put 1 layer of matting and fiberglass resin on all sides it is probably twice as strong as a sheet of 3/4" thick plywood and you could set it on saw horses and a 200lb guy could jump up and down on it all day long and it won't bend or break. They don't use "extra" fiberglass over foam stringers, they use the same amount or less. Foam coring allows a builder to build a boat that is just as strong using less fiberglass and therefore less weight.

Foam cored stringers and transoms does not mean a boat will last any longer than wood cored either. It all depends on how the fiberglass layup is. Using cheap coring and mixing the fiberglass resin with way too much hardener put Bertram Yachts (a huge builder in business for 40 years) out of business. They used cheap coring and way too much hardener and had around 20 57' and 63' sportfish boats (that I know of) literally come apart or fall apart, stringers ripped out, boats disintegrating etc. during the mid 2000s that put them out of business. Here are a few photos and these were $2-4 million dollar yachts less than 5 years old. There was one owner out of Palm Beach,FL who bought a new 57' and it came apart, they gave him a brand new 63', it too came apart, they gave him a 70' for free to replace it and he instantly put it up for sale and nobody would buy it and he lost a ton of money to sell it. The yellow boat was one of his.

http://search.aol.com/aol/imag...lient97_searchbox-ac

http://search.aol.com/aol/imag...lient97_searchbox-ac

http://search.aol.com/aol/imag...am+hull+delamination

http://search.aol.com/aol/imag...amination+palm+beach



Any blue book is absolutely useless on a boat of this size and age, it's all about condition and demand in that region.

If the metal flakes coming off in your hand, wet sanding it was probably already done...do it again and you'll sand right through the gelcoat, buff it and you will buff right through the gelcoat.....at this point lightly sand it and spray clearcoat right over it, or painting it will be the only things that will make it shine again or preserve it. You have to spray it if you clear coat over the gelcoat as rolling it will look horrible because the metal flake will reflect every imperfection from a mile away.

Before you recarpet the floor, if it's bare wood and the wood is in good condition, I would seal it with West system and a very thin layer of fiberglass matting to keep it from rotting, and then after that's cured glue outdoor marine carpet to it.

Also do not use dielectrical grease on wires before crimping them, the grease reduces the friction of the crimp and allows the wires to pull out easier. Use heatshrink butt connectors like these. You crimp the wire, then heat it with a heat gun or lighter or teeny torch and the butt connector itself heat shrinks. These are all anyone in the marine industry usually uses. They even sell them at walmart.
https://www.jamestowndistribut...w_product.do?pid=706

Changing stringers and/or transom can be done, but it's a lot of labor hours and work. Not worth financially doing on a boat of this age.

It all depends on how the boat was stored. A friend of mine bought a 20' ranger bass boat that was a 1988 about 6 years ago, it was stored inside it's entire life and pristine except the gelcoat faded, but all wood deck and stringers and transom were perfect. He clear coated it and it looked phenomenal. He built a 250hp Ocean Pro into 325 hp and it did 93 mph on motor and with 150hp of nitrous it did 116 mph. He played with it up until 2 years ago and sold it. The next owner left it outside for 2 years and it's destroyed, clear coat all peeled off, wood deck is all mush and structurally unsound, transom falling off of the boat because they left the motor down pulling it out from the ramp and ripped it off. The boat in 2 years is now junk.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
whoever said that a surveyor drills tiny holes in the stringers to check moisture content. You NEVER drill holes in the stringers, EVER. Unless, you absolutely have to in order to mount a piece of equipment. Moisture is determined with a thermal imaging camera (preferred method) but also a cheap moisture meter for houses found at home depot works pretty well too. You will get a moisture reading on every inch of fiberglass on a boat.....Usually 10% +/-, what you want to look for are any spikes, like if you see 20% in an area of the transom or floor.

Fair enough. It has been a while since I had any experience with marine surveyors and either things have changed or I misremembered.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
They don't use "extra" fiberglass over foam stringers, they use the same amount or less. Foam coring allows a builder to build a boat that is just as strong using less fiberglass and therefore less weight.

A properly designed and built fiberglass-over-wood boat uses less fiberglass than an all-synthetic fiberglass boat and is stronger, stiffer, and lighter than anything but high-end carbon fiber construction.

Wood's strength to weight ratio is much higher than fiberglass, especially fiberglass laid up with mat to build thickness.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
Also do not use dielectrical grease on wires before crimping them, the grease reduces the friction of the crimp and allows the wires to pull out easier. Use heatshrink butt connectors like these. You crimp the wire, then heat it with a heat gun or lighter or teeny torch and the butt connector itself heat shrinks. These are all anyone in the marine industry usually uses.

The heat shrink connectors are certainly a good idea, but properly crimped connectors rely on mechanical interference more than friction and dielectric grease in the connector will not make properly crimped connectors pull apart (or negatively impact conductivity).

I've tested it and even with dielectric grease the connections go well past the ABYC standards for mechanical strength.

It might be a problem if you use cheap hardware store electrician crimpers, but if you use a proper ratcheting crimped, it's fine.

A boat built with synthetic coring and fiberglass is much stronger and much lighter than using wood coring. Wood coring has been surpassed in almost all cases by synthetic coring. Synthetic coring is the way to go these days instead of using wood coring. Builders have gone to great lengths to get weight down over the past 10-15 years. Many builders are now vaccuum bagging the entire hull and sucking out any excess resin as standard practice to get better resin dispersion/resin infusion (it helps by pushing out any air voids) and less resin.

The absolutely worst coring used by boat builders was balsa wood. It was very light and strong, but balsa absorbed water like a chamois, so any screw hole or anything that allowed water to get into it caused it to soak up a ton of water and it rotted very quickly.

OP - definitely listen to jimmy, he's the one that taught me how to do the hull repair on my bass boat.


As for the electrical connections -

I guess I stand corrected? I got that info from Humminbird. They recommend that all the wiring for power/ground for their electronics be soldered connections. ???

quote:

Originally posted by Krazeehorse:
Here's a fun look at a Glastron. I have a 74 CV-16 in the same color with a 115 horse Johnson. I believe the one Bond is driving is a 15 footer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upQ-MXF_ZgI

When I was a kid we had the exact same boat that Bond is driving in that chase. Same color and everything. We bought it before the movie came out. That movie made the boat seriously cool for years.

I saw a Glastron boat on the Nile river in Khartoum in 1977 with a Mercury motor. I will see if I can find the picture.

well, if i did not have to have a degree in Egyptian hieroglyphics, i would just post a picture of it LOL... i know it is a glasstron, i know it is 17.5 foot and is very wide, i only guessed the model by looking at internet pics

and im not sure of the technical terms, but the hull and decks were sound, best me and a few buddys could tell

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
A boat built with synthetic coring and fiberglass is much stronger and much lighter than using wood coring. Wood coring has been surpassed in almost all cases by synthetic coring. Synthetic coring is the way to go these days instead of using wood coring. Builders have gone to great lengths to get weight down over the past 10-15 years. Many builders are now vaccuum bagging the entire hull and sucking out any excess resin as standard practice to get better resin dispersion/resin infusion (it helps by pushing out any air voids) and less resin.

The absolutely worst coring used by boat builders was balsa wood. It was very light and strong, but balsa absorbed water like a chamois, so any screw hole or anything that allowed water to get into it caused it to soak up a ton of water and it rotted very quickly.

Part of the problem may be that I've wandered pretty far afield. In this context, I was talking about the type of construction in which you effectively build a wood boat and then lightly glass over it to protect the wood from moisture, not just building the same boat and swapping out the stringers between foam and wood.

I do agree with you that no-wood construction is, generally speaking, a better idea. Just comparing similar construction methods, the average boat owner is a lot less likely to do difficult/expensive to repair damage to the boat without realizing it.

Compared to the construction methods mentioned above, that still applies, plus typical no-wood boats are much less labor intensive and less expensive to build (although they generally require higher capital costs).

On the specific subject of wood stringers vs. foam stringers, with wood stringers the strength usually comes from the wood and the glass is there to keep it stuck to the hull and protect it from moisture. With foam stringers, the strength comes from the glass and the foam is there to give you a shape to put the glass on and to keep the glass from collapsing. Wood stringers don't need as much glass as foam stringers do.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:

The absolutely worst coring used by boat builders was balsa wood. It was very light and strong, but balsa absorbed water like a chamois, so any screw hole or anything that allowed water to get into it caused it to soak up a ton of water and it rotted very quickly.

Balsa core get a bad rap from poor maintenance. Occasionally a builder screws up a build and causes problems. But the majority of core issues are owner and maintenance related. I work on sailboats and have done my share of recoring. Usually due to leaking fittings bolted through the deck. I tell my customers that the water is supposed to stay OUTSIDE the boat. That includes rainwater. If you see a leak, fix it. Or call me in a few years when it's a bigger problem.

I have a couple of J boats that are balsa core. The J22 is an '83 and had some core issues from the previous owner. The J27 is an '86 model and it's never had any core issues.

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
OP - definitely listen to jimmy, he's the one that taught me how to do the hull repair on my bass boat.


As for the electrical connections -

I guess I stand corrected? I got that info from Humminbird. They recommend that all the wiring for power/ground for their electronics be soldered connections. ???

Hummingbird is correct in that use as the wires are very very small gauge on electronics. It's near impossible to get a solid crimp on 22 gauge and smaller wire, so with such tiny wires it's best to braid both together, solder them, then heatshrink over that.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
A boat built with synthetic coring and fiberglass is much stronger and much lighter than using wood coring. Wood coring has been surpassed in almost all cases by synthetic coring. Synthetic coring is the way to go these days instead of using wood coring. Builders have gone to great lengths to get weight down over the past 10-15 years. Many builders are now vaccuum bagging the entire hull and sucking out any excess resin as standard practice to get better resin dispersion/resin infusion (it helps by pushing out any air voids) and less resin.

The absolutely worst coring used by boat builders was balsa wood. It was very light and strong, but balsa absorbed water like a chamois, so any screw hole or anything that allowed water to get into it caused it to soak up a ton of water and it rotted very quickly.

Part of the problem may be that I've wandered pretty far afield. In this context, I was talking about the type of construction in which you effectively build a wood boat and then lightly glass over it to protect the wood from moisture, not just building the same boat and swapping out the stringers between foam and wood.

I do agree with you that no-wood construction is, generally speaking, a better idea. Just comparing similar construction methods, the average boat owner is a lot less likely to do difficult/expensive to repair damage to the boat without realizing it.

Compared to the construction methods mentioned above, that still applies, plus typical no-wood boats are much less labor intensive and less expensive to build (although they generally require higher capital costs).

On the specific subject of wood stringers vs. foam stringers, with wood stringers the strength usually comes from the wood and the glass is there to keep it stuck to the hull and protect it from moisture. With foam stringers, the strength comes from the glass and the foam is there to give you a shape to put the glass on and to keep the glass from collapsing. Wood stringers don't need as much glass as foam stringers do.

The type of construction you're talking about is called cold molded. You're right it is lighter and stronger but only used in very limited applications. You use okuma plywood and build a boat and then west system epoxy and 2 layers of fiberglass matting. Yes it is very strong and lightweight. Custom Sportfish builders are about the only ones who use this method as it's expensive. But they do come in about 2/3 the weight of a production fiberglass boat. I've also been involved with a 65' Sportfish from back in the 90's that was cold molded with kevlar on the outside, was very fast for it's HP and time period, BUT VERY NOISY at it's 40 mph cruise, it sounded like the entire boat was disintegrating.

Jim Smith pioneered the use of cold molded with no fasteners to hold it together. He did TONS for the boating and sportfish industry and had 60' boats doing 50 mph in the 80's with fuel fishing tower and outriggers.

Cored fiberglass boats, compared to ones cored with wood are lighter. Coring becomes VERY strong when 1-2 layers of fiberglass matting are laid up over it, the fiberglass sticks to the synthetic coring and it becomes one solid material. Look at the Sportfish pictures I posted. The fiberglass layer falling off of the coring on the hull side is pretty darn thin, like 5/16" and this is on a 45mph 63' sportfish. The issue in Bertrams sake is they used cheap coring which off gassed and broke the bond between it and the fiberglass AND laid up the fiberglass with way too much catalyst making it brittle. It IS lighter than wood. If you don't believe me, go pick up some of the new surfboards. Stronger than wood cored ones and VERY light. Using synthetic in the stringers and transom lightens up the boat, the same amount of glass or less is used with synthetic coring. As once you adhere the glass to the coring it makes it very strong and becomes a single bond.

We have a '71 V-156 that my husband's dad has owned since it was new. The boat, motor and trailer were his demo set at his shop, actually.

Great boat. We have a Mercury inline 6 135 hp motor on it. Use it every year on the river and creeks around here.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
The type of construction you're talking about is called cold molded.

That's certainly one of the ways to do it, and I mentioned it earlier in the thread.

I have a couple of books on cold-molded construction and the history of cold-molded sportfishing boats in the Carolinas. To me, those are some of the best looking boats that have ever been built.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
If you don't believe me, go pick up some of the new surfboards. Stronger than wood cored ones and VERY light.

I can easily believe they are lighter and stiffer. Surfboards are basically flat so stiffness is hugely dependent on thickness. You can make a much thicker surfboard out of much lighter foam and it will be a lot stiffer.

I'm not sure about the strength, but for a surfboard I doubt it even matters.

With a complex structure like a boat it isn't quite as clear cut, but certainly for things like decks you could make them lighter and stiffer with foam cores. Again, I'm not sure about the strength, but this is another case where I don't think that matters very much. Either would be plenty strong.

It's possible the same is true for stringers.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
OP - definitely listen to jimmy, he's the one that taught me how to do the hull repair on my bass boat.


As for the electrical connections -

I guess I stand corrected? I got that info from Humminbird. They recommend that all the wiring for power/ground for their electronics be soldered connections. ???

Hummingbird is correct in that use as the wires are very very small gauge on electronics. It's near impossible to get a solid crimp on 22 gauge and smaller wire, so with such tiny wires it's best to braid both together, solder them, then heatshrink over that.

They aren't that small anymore.. Seen the new helix units??

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
OP - definitely listen to jimmy, he's the one that taught me how to do the hull repair on my bass boat.


As for the electrical connections -

I guess I stand corrected? I got that info from Humminbird. They recommend that all the wiring for power/ground for their electronics be soldered connections. ???

Hummingbird is correct in that use as the wires are very very small gauge on electronics. It's near impossible to get a solid crimp on 22 gauge and smaller wire, so with such tiny wires it's best to braid both together, solder them, then heatshrink over that.

They aren't that small anymore.. Seen the new helix units??

No, we don't use hummingbird stuff on the yachts. Garmin, Furuno, Simrad, and once in a while Raymarine (worst brand of the bunch). But yeah, all of the electronics have gotten a lot more advanced in the past 5 years.

If you haven't bought it, do a compression test on the motor, and also back off the drain screw for the lower unit, and let a few drops drip out and make sure there is no water in the lower unit.

If you just bought it. I'd go through the motor and change the water pump impellor, gear lube (use Mercury High Performance it is the best gear lube on the market), fuel filters, and spark plugs. If it has the silver/grey fuel lines, change those immediately as ethanol fuel breaks them down almost instantly and clogs the carburaters. Also use ethanol free gasoline, good 2 stroke oil, and Pri-g or another good gas stabilizer in the fuel.