85 2001 LVL Stringer Project

Exciting!!! Great work! The boat looks spectacular!

Man... thats a lot of work for one weekend! great job and your boat looks awesome!! this will be a great go by...

I wanna see this thing... haha

I was not able to work on the boat Monday afternoon, wife had a softball game so I had to watch the kids. Some people and their priorities I tell you!!

One good thing is my Humminbird 650 came in on Monday as did my Nautique Trailer Guide pads and shock tube.

Yesterday I had to do some running around to pick up some stuff like 8awg wire to run some new grounds to the front and rear of the boat and a new positive to the front. By suggestion I am also running a new ignition wire. I could not find a purple wire to run it with so I bought some green and will just have to label it.

I picked up some new fenders and fender line, a handle for using on the battery box lid, battery hold down strap, bus for ground (That I now do not think I will need) and the materials below for building a raw water Tee for running my boat on the hose at the house.

This is everything apart so you can see the parts.


The valve is a full opening 3/4" ball valve so it should not restrict water flow.


Here it is all put together.


Also last night I cleaned up my strainer and strainer mount so they are ready to go back in the boat along with the new Tee.

I also ran my bilge pump hose, on another note I think I am going to have to scuff up a place in my bilge for the bilge pump to mount. I hot glued it down Saturday with super strength hot glue and it pulled up yesterday. I will try scuffing a few places and see if that holds.

Then I went to the back of the boat and went to work with the buffer. I wanted to get this done before I stated mounting everything back there to make it easier and so I did not get compound all over all the new stuff.

The previous owner had some repairs done on the port rear after a jet ski hit the boat at his dock. The damage was not all that bad from what I could see when I had the floor up. (I made sure to inspect this area good and added some fiberglass inside to reinforce just in case.) But anyway after the repairs the maroon stripe was repainted and so was some of the white on the bottom.

This is the only thing I do not like about the boat. Well that, the lack of storage space and only rated for 6 people, but that is neither here nor there. The thing with the paint is that it is chipping off on the back pretty bad on the port where things were mounted. It is under the swim deck so it is not that big of a deal but it aggrivates my OCD a little.

63 Skier wrote: Hey Kris, on your raw water fittings, don't you want a female hose end on your tee, not a male? Seems like you'll be connecting to the male end of the hose. I'm putting one in mine shortly so was thinking about it.

I am going to have to make an adapter hose with a female on both ends. I wanted the male end on the boat so I could put on a cap with the seal as an extra line of defense so that it is sealed and hopefully keep the air leaks to a minimum.

That's going to be pretty amazing when you get done, I hope you get to spash it next week. I can't wait for some on-water pictures.

Understood on the hose fitting, easy enough to keep a short adapter hose handy. On my last install I used female hose fitting with ball valve like you, but put a decent quality hose valve into the female fitting so it acted as a 2nd valve. Not quite as foolproof as a cap, but 2 valves is pretty close.

Jllogan wrote: This is exactly what i have done as well. Thought the cap was important to ensure a tight system. Im sure over time that ball valve can get weak/not seal so great. I bought a shorter 10 foot hose and added an extra female end.

Ball valves will likely outlast the boat, but it's pretty easy to hit the handle or even just bouncing moving it a bit and then you've got an air leak. On my jet boat the ball valve opened and in that case it's the opposite, the water line is pressurized by the jet, so I noticed the bilge pump was on and went looking, found a pretty solid stream of water emptying into the bilge! That's the last time I left it un-capped.

Next we move inside the boat to the rear.



The gas tank is just sat in there right now. I wanted to run it this weekend. More on that later. The tank was cleaned on the outside.

New tank strips was made from 1X4s coated in cpes then rubber strips were contact cemented and stapled on with SS Staples.

Steering cable mount was drilled. I was worried about this because I did not have an exact dimension on where I overdrilled and filled with epoxy for this to mount. I looked through a bunch of pictures from when I did this though and made an educated guess. No wood shavings when I drilled so I am saying my thank yous!!!

Steering cable installed. I cleaned all the old grease from the steering wheel end and coated in a new layer of marine grease. I also cleaned the bottom tube inside and out on the steering wheel where the excess cable goes.

You can see the installed rudder port.

I installed the 2 speedo tubes, with 4200 on the screws, on the wood right under the lift ring.

I repaired the starboard muffler by putting 2 rounds of cloth around the ends. There were a couple of places where it was separating, probably would not have leaked but I wanted to make sure.

Once repaired I gave both mufflers a fresh coat of paint and wrapped them in some new carpet and installed them in the boat.

Looking great!

Hopefully you aligned the engine to where the shaft spun freely (regardless of whether it was centered in the log or not)?

Make sure you point that water tee towards the top... it would be a PITA to connect to the hose with it pointed down like that once the motorbox is installed.

Im not sure that the strainer will fit neatly under the motorbox the way you have your hoses run... CC would have put that first hose from the pick up under the tranny and up over the top by coming through between the tranny mount and bellhousing on the starboard side.

Are those 2 mufflers different lengths, or did you stagger them lengthwise on purpose? Just curious.

Make sure you get that throttle cable away from the coupler before you engage the transmission

Looking good!

Those electronic modules are known to go bad. Maybe you should put the points back in.

Neither the strainer nor the control cables need to be hard mounted to anything, FYI- if you can just route them a little differently, they will stay where theyre supposed to. Be especially careful on the control cables... dont introduce any tighter bends than you absolutely have to. Just the slightest extra bit of bending will cause them to be less than smooth at the control.

Jllogan wrote: Those electronic modules are known to go bad. Maybe you should put the points back in.

Would it go bad just sitting?

TRBenj wrote: Good call on the heatshrink... that may extend the life of the cable a bit. If you want to eliminate the zip ties, you could route the hoses and cables similar to this. Food for thought. If you have spark at the plugs, then your EI module is not bad. I would personally skip the starting fluid and just pour a little bit of fresh gas down the throat of the carb. You may need to open the throttle butterflies most of the way to get it to kick after doing this.

I like that routing I will try that when I get home after putting on some heat shrink on the throttle cable.

I tried some gas directly down the carb. I did not hold the throttle wide open though.

4 gallons in the tank should be plenty. If the fuel/water separator had been pre-filled, that would speed the process along (as opposed to making the fuel pump fill it up) but its not required. If you can get the engine to kick by itself by pouring some gas down the throat, then that will fill it pretty fast. It will probably take a few times.

Nice work!