New Jet Boat

[wakeboarderCWB]

So I drove 500 miles to Indiana yesterday to pick up a jet boat. It's a nice boat, just needs to be put together. We're going to put some graphics on it, install seats and rewire the whole thing. I uploaded an album of the boat below, so take a look if you want.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63236937@N08/sets/72157629446635138/

It's got a 455 Oldsmobile in it. Dual quad Holley carburetor. It's a 1979 Taylor jet boat. On a good, calm day out on the lake it should easily reach 80-85 MPH. Yeah, it'll be a nice Summer project with my brother and dad, so hopefully we can enjoy it in a few months.


Pulled the engine to get ready to do some structural work. This thing weighs a ton, but we got a engine stand that could hold it.


Carb, scoop, and tunnel ram are off. We're going to  polish them up and do some powder coating.


Started to grind out the stringers. Took around 5 days to get the out completely and grind out the rest of the hard fiberglass.


Both stringers are out.


We got both stringers cut out, tops rounded off, and put them in place in their slots. We glued around the edges of them to hold them in place. We also got the rear bulkhead cut out, and all that needs to be done to that is grinding the top down and cutting out a slot for the belt drive from the engine.


Stringers are fiber glassed in. Couldn't take any pictures of the process as the hardener hardens in 15 minutes. So we had to go and get it done with no distractions/interruptions.


Rear bulkhead is now all set to be fiber glassed in. The edges are fiber glassed. We cut a little indent for the belt drive from the engine.


Rear bulkhead is all put in and ready to go. Front bulkhead is made with entry holes. Bottom of the front bulkhead is fiber glassed in, but the top we're just going to carpet over.


Close up picture of the front bulkhead.


Floor supports are made and put in.


Our little powder coating set up. You cans see the coating gun in the back laying against the box. After we powder coat the item, we just move the rack and put it directly in the oven(Which is right behind the tractor in the back).


The pump housing is powder coated and we put a clear coat on it to bring the purple out.


Impeller is out. Small chip that we fixed, hopefully we'll get a new impeller next year.


Just some powder coated parts cooling down. They get baked at 450 until the powder begins to become liquid and "flow", then they get baked at 400 for 20 mins.


We tried to sand blast the bell housing, but it didn't work too well. So then we decided to grind it out, which was taking forever. We went up to Home Depot and picked up some paint stripper, coated it and then just scraped the paint right off.


Pump drive and shoe, along with the transom being gel coated. We had to spray paint these parts since they were too big for the oven, and the closest color we could fine to the powder coating purple was this :/ It's too deep of a purple, but it'll do.

[Technical Abbreviations]

That engine... Looks excessive for a jet boat ._.
Hope it turns out well though.

[Nicknero]

Huge engine for a small boat.
But those seats in the bank of your car looks cool

Good luck on the boat.

[?AG-CL? Sheo]

I've never seen a monstrocity of a motor boat like that before, jeezus christ. It takes a lot of force to dislocate that amount of water to move that quickly. That thing's packing some serious heat in the horsepower department. How good will it's gas consumption rates be?

[wakeboarderCWB]

I've never seen a monstrocity of a motor boat like that before, jeezus christ. It takes a lot of force to dislocate that amount of water to move that quickly. That thing's packing some serious heat in the horsepower department. How good will it's gas consumption rates be?

Oh boy, we're not sure about that yet. Probably around 7 or 8 MPG. Each time we take it out we'll be filling it up, so it won't be an everyday thing.

And this engine is actually common for this boat. Either a 454 Oldsmobile or a 455. It'll be a pretty quick machine.

[wag1]

:C

Dat engine...

Anyways, I'm guessing you're gonna take it for wakeboarding? :/

Our family used to have a jet boat like that, but then one day when my brother had decided to drive it, he ran it up an island and ripped through the bottom :/

[wakeboarderCWB]

:C

Dat engine...

Anyways, I'm guessing you're gonna take it for wakeboarding? :/

Our family used to have a jet boat like that, but then one day when my brother had decided to drive it, he ran it up an island and ripped through the bottom :/

Haha, I like having my arms therefore I will not go wakeboarding behind it. 18 - 20MPH is good for wakeboarding, not 80

Yeah, there's only one shallow part on my lake but it's easy to just go around it. We have to stay in about 10 feet of water, as it can easily suck down to 6 feet to cool the engine.

[wakeboarderCWB]

Bumparoo

Forgot about this thread and as I was taking the pictures off my phone I remembered. We got A LOT done on the boat, but it's turning into a winter project since we had a lot of stuff come up, so once we finish putting the walls in our shop up and hooking our wood stove up we'll begin work again.

Well, I'll try and explain what we found and did as much as possible. Pictures are in the first post.

We took the floor out that was already in there. We were going to leave it in, but good thing we didn't since it wasn't even marine carpet, and the wood was just 1/4" plywood, not wolmanized(Waterproof/Pressure Treated). We got 3/4" wolmanized plywood that we're going to use with the floor. Upon further inspection of the hull and stringers, we had to cut out both stringers since they were so rotted out. Not only that, but the guys we bought it from took the front bulkhead out, so the only thing holding the front of the boat up was a little tube for a gas tank that wasn't even made for the boat.

Having to basically redo the entire structure of the boat set us back a lot, but it was a good learning experience. Fiberglassing was fun, but it had to be done so precisely so the boat can stay straight and stiff on the water. Not much else other than cutting out the front and back bulkhead and putting that in.

We also did a water test on it, so we took it out into our driveway and put about an inch of water in the back. The shoe where the pump housing sits had a bad seal, so we had to take that out. We had to re-epoxy the shoe in which was very hard to do since it had to be 100% water tight. That set us back a couple days as we couldn't do anything as we waited for the epoxy to dry.

We picked up an electric oven for $50 that we put in the garage. Not for cooking, though. We're using it for powder coating, which is easier than I thought. It basically shoots dust from a gun that sticks it to whatever your coating with static, then you bake it in the oven. It lasts longer than spray paint, but it's very time consuming.

We also did some sandblasting, which went both good and bad. We had to do some grinding on some parts first to loosen up the paint, and for some parts my dad had to take them to the sandblasting booth at work and do them there. This I hated, as we made a little booth , we had to wear pants(85-100 degrees each day we worked on this), and sand went all over the place and ricocheted off of the part and kept hitting me. Wasn't the most fun, but we had to get it done.

We also fiber glassed and gel coated the transom. Only took about 2 days, and it came out fairly well.

We started to take apart the jet pump, and good thing we did. The impeller had a chip on one of the fins, but we straightened the best we could and spot welded it a bit. We're not going to buy a new one, as we need to get a stainless steel one for the amount of horsepower in our engine and a new stainless steel impeller costs $1000(1/3 of what the boat costs...).

Other than that we didn't do much else. Little jobs here and there, but we had to paint our house which set us back.