3Squids '79 Center Console thread

Not much of an update. Motors at the motor man. Boats still at the glass man. He cut the skin off the transom last night and on the starboard side he started at the top and when he got to the chine water began to run out. Made it sound like a substantial amount. He then went along the bottom of the hull cutting and said water just kept coming out. He hasn't got the skin free of the wood yet but he pulled the top away and the wood is definitely shot. It's delaminating like crazy and is flaky.

Supposed to get the skin off tonight and try and figure where all the water is from. He cut the port side all the way down to the plug first, and not a drop of water came out. Seems something made a sort of pocket in the starboard side that it collected in. Just praying when he gets it out that the stringers and foam are ok.
 
3 Squids said:
Not much of an update. Motors at the motor man. Boats still at the glass man. He cut the skin off the transom last night and on the starboard side he started at the top and when he got to the chine water began to run out. Made it sound like a substantial amount. He then went along the bottom of the hull cutting and said water just kept coming out. He hasn't got the skin free of the wood yet but he pulled the top away and the wood is definitely shot. It's delaminating like crazy and is flaky.

Supposed to get the skin off tonight and try and figure where all the water is from. He cut the port side all the way down to the plug first, and not a drop of water came out. Seems something made a sort of pocket in the starboard side that it collected in. Just praying when he gets it out that the stringers and foam are ok.
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Ummmm ... What is he cutting? The inside or the outside skin? The transom has a curve to it.. slight, but it's there. That's why most that cut the skin cut the inside one to maintain the curve.
 
He's cutting the outside. I questioned this also and he assures me it will be right. Said he's done a bunch of V's. Said something about using 3 layers of 1/2" instead of 2 layers of 3/4 to get the curve back. We shall see. He guarantees his work for life as long as I don't go drilling holes in the transom so if something is wrong he will fix it.
 
hey squids, any chance u can get some photos. i know the guy doesn't want u hovering over him with a camera, but shots of whats under there might help some of us in the future.
thanks
 
Yea I'm supposed to get pics along the way.

Also got contacted today by the motor man. All looks well in the motor as far as the crank and block. He suggested new, oversized pistons. I told him he knows best and do whatever he wanted. Hopefully that'll be back together next week as well as my transom. Would love to have her in the water for Labor Day.
 
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Well my glass guy has been feeling bad since it's been so hot so I went over to help get it going. Got the skin off and wow the smell. It was bad. Had some dry wood in high places but probably 85% was wet. It would seem someone put a full new transom with the 20" dropped area at some time. Then later someone put a section to build it up to hold the 25" motor.


You can see the rectangle section at the top where they updated the transom to 25". The inner piece of wood was cut exactly to the shape of the dropped section. The the outer piece was cut a bit bigger to overlap the seam.

I suspect it's not the original transom as it was cut about 2" smaller than it needed to be. Then they had some sort of hard rubbery material filling the void from the edge of the wood and the side of the hull. None of the wood had been laminated together and the 2 sheets were put together with crown staples. I'm highly doubt that Wellcraft did that.

Now to the real disturbing findings. On the outside of the stringers where they connect to the transom there were holes cut through the inner skin. So any moisture that came to the stern on the outside of the stringers went right in the transom wood.


Here you can kind of see the hole. This is the starboard side. What really sucks is this also let the moisture to seep into the stringer. But he doesn't think it made its way far into the stringer. Tomorrow he's going to cut a section out of the inner skin and investigate more. And he said it will also give him better access to tie the stringers into the new transom well.

Here's about 1/2 of the nastiness pulled out.


We got all the big stuff out. Tomorrow he's gonna let the rest of the wood residue dry out and hit it with the sander to clean up the skin. Then start putting it all back together. He's going to lay another layer of glass to the inner skin making sure it's sealed up from everything else. He also plans on making some passages from outside of the stringers into the bilge for any water to drain into the bilge instead of the transom.
 
Also in the 3rd pic you can see the 2 scupper tubes coming out and close to right in the middle you can see about a 1" diameter hole that was cut into the inner skin. This also would let any moisture into the transom. As well as the holes from the 20" motor weren't sealed up on the inside. Plenty of ways for moisture to enter the transom. But the glass guy guarantees it won't be that way again.
 
Wellcraft could have saved us all a lot of grief with a little more work. If they would have sealed the holes in the stringers with a little resin and glassed the top of the transom instead of the aluminum strips. But I guess they weren't built to go 30 something years.
 
Grinded the wood off the outer skin tonight. Gonna get the inner skin cleaned up tomorrow. It still had some wet spots and I figured that'd gum up the wheel pretty quickly. Should be dry by tomorrow evening. Then we will start glassing it all back together this weekend. My glass guy was working was another transom tonight glassing it all together and it's definitely more complicated then I thought it'd be. Glad I'm not going at this on my own that's for sure.
 
Got the inner skin cleaned up. I can't believe all the ways for water to get into the transom.


Was talking a bit to the glass guy and he noticed there were stress cracks in the gel coat on the corners of the transom. He believes the problem is that the 2 lower motor bolts are 4" higher than where the stringers connect to the transom. This is the bad thing about raising a 20" transom I guess.

He believes putting a couple knees in it will make it more than strong enough. We came up with a plan to run 2 knees from the transom down to tie into the stringers and the last bulkhead. I'll have to put a bit smaller hatch door to access the bilge but I can still have a 14"x24" opening so I think that's plenty. It mainly looked like the opening there was so long before because there was a battery shelf in there. We cut that out as well as the batteries are in the console now.

He dug into the stringers also and other than the last inch or so they are solid as a rock so that's good news.
 
Man it's been a while since the last update. Not much has happened. Power head is rebuilt and sitting at the shop waiting to get intstalled. Transom is getting wrapped up now. It was a bit more of a project than I had anticipated but none the less it should be done by weekends end.

We repaired the last 6" of stringers as that's the only place that had moisture, which came from the transom. We also built 1-1/2" thick knees from the top of the transom angled down and tied into the stringers and floor. This thing out of pop out the hole like nobody's business. The knees pretty much tie everything into the transom which in the future would make a transom repair much more of a PITA but plans are not to have to do it again. And like my glass man said, as long as he is the one to mount anything to the transom then he guarantees it for life.

I had someone interested in my T-top while it's been sitting there. I love the lack of maintenance needed to a stainless top however I feel for this boat the weight advantage would be nice to have aluminum. Got a quote for a new aluminum frame, cored hardtop with e-box mounded in and installed for $1800. Thinking if I can offset 1/2 the cost by selling mine I may go ahead and pull the trigger. Just for the heck of it I told the guy I wanted $1200 for mine. He's supposed to pass the message on and we will go from there. It's one of those things where mine works and is fine so selling it for less than what I want is pointless. I'll stick with it for a while before I'd give it away.

In other news it's seems I destroyed the foot on my motor when we made our test ride. My buddy felt some play in the lower unit and told me he thought something was wrong. Well I pulled the plug and not a drop of oil came out and the magnet plug is covered in large metal junks. Why the hell I didn't check the oil before taking it is beyond me. Bonehead move on my part.

But today I picked up a parts motor. I got a 1999 150 Merc complete for $300. I mostly was interested because of the newer style cowling that's in good shape other than some sun fade. The foot was off the motor. The guy that had it hauled a boat off of someone's property so he knew nothing about it. The water pump was removed so I was thinking maybe the pump went, hurt the motor and they removed it to investigate. Or so I hoped. But when I went to pick it up his dad was there and said he was told the lower unit was junk and that's why they parked it. Which means I don't have a good foot but I'm hoping maybe the PH is fine and I can wheel and deal with a buddy of mine for a good foot. We shall see. But all the electronics seem in good shape, tilt/trim works and cowlings good so I feel I still did well for $300. I'll post pics of the score in the morning.
 
Here's my $300 parts motor. Haven't had a chance to do a comp test. If that turns out ok I may go ahead and try to get it running. That'd be a sweet deal


Went ahead and put the cowling on my motor. Thought I'd have to change the mounts but it lined right up. Probably gonna put a fresh coat of paint on it soon. Though keeping the 150 decals on it would be funny while blowing by some bigger boats. Can't wait to see what the 200's gonna do.
 
3 Squids said:
Went ahead and put the cowling on my motor. Thought I'd have to change the mounts but it lined right up. Probably gonna put a fresh coat of paint on it soon. Though keeping the 150 decals on it would be funny while blowing by some bigger boats. Can't wait to see what the 200's gonna do.
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I like that cowl. I've got the same engine, so I may have to try to find one for myself. You're gonna love that 200 on your boat. Sweet engine. Perfect combination. :beer:
 
Before cowl:

miscwellcraft030.jpg


After newer style, and no, that's not a 135 under there heh, heh, heh!

wellcraftopti005-1.jpg




Glad to hear the progress, sounds like she is coming together
 
Well we planned on having the transom wrapped up this weekend but that didn't happen. Starting to get irritated now. My engine guy has been patiently waiting for the boat but I'm sure his patience is running low. Kinda wish I'd just tackled this on my own.

But anyways while I've been waiting I found some bad news about the parts motor I got. The lower unit is bad. The motor would probably run but has 75-80 psi per cylinder. Good sign nothing is tore up in the motor, just needs freshened up. Still, for $300 I think I did well. The cowlings, working tilt/trim and all the other spare parts I got are well worth $300.

I tried to clean up the hood yesterday but my plans to keep the misleading 150hp decals came to an end. It looked terrible once I cleaned them up. So I just took them off with a heat gun and eraser wheel then buffed the hood and lower cowlings. Of course the top is still faded but it looks much better. I still will probably paint it but this will hold me over for the time being.



 
Looking at that picture with the black cowl like that and for some reason all I kept hearing in my mind was "Luke, I am your father".... :you:
 
Well been a while but progress is being made. I have had the motor guy on hold now for over a month. I offered to bring him the boat to hang the motor and run it and he kept insisting I get the transom 100% done first. Well I finally just told the fiberglass guy enough is enough, I got to get the boat back. So today we kinda slapped it all back together and hopefully tomorrow I will get the motor hung.

Unfortunately I'll have to take the motor back off and redo a lot of what was done today. The transom itself is fine, just mostly cosmetics in the splash well. I just needed it back together. I was warned the glass guy was good but took a long time but I didn't think it'd be over 2 months. I can see if he had other projects he had to finish first but he started mine soon as I took it there. All well. It'll get done. It was just nice seeing the transom part done. He sprayed it with a thick coat of gel-coat that'll need sanded and buffed of course but that can wait.

Also I have a guy interested in buying my T-top, which still hasn't had the hardtop repairs done. He wants to buy it as is for 3/4 of what I can get a new custom aluminum framed, cored hardtop with built in E-box T-top installed on the boat. Soon as he shows me the cash I may go ahead and pull the trigger on that.

Here's a couple pics I took tonight. You can see the lack of prep in the splash well but the fact she is coming home tomorrow morning is all I care about.



 
I've learned that fiberglass shops are good places to get free boat storage, often times multiple years worth. Be careful of the hatch in the splash well, potential sinking hazard. A foam roller at least would have been nice of him. I like the transom knees.
 
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