Okie Boarder's Floor and Stringer Replacement

Yeah, I have two concerns. The ski locker itself breaking and it crushing stuff under it. I would think support just off center in two spots might be enough.

I had thought about that as an option. Just drop it in there is what you're thinking, right? I wonder what it would do if I put one inside and one outside (on the bottom) and screwed them together through the plastic?

Pete,

I assume you mean under the tank? Yeah it sits on the strringers...all 4 of them.

When you say you like the ply idea are you saying for it to rest on the tank and wedge in between or the sandwich idea I mentioned?

Here are a few pictures. I'll take some pictures of the rear seat and ski locker lid installed tonight.

So Andy,whats your ballast plan?How much weight can you hide?

Keegan,

Where's your gas tank?

Ryan,

I haven't finished the calculations, but I have 3 bags that will be hidden. Under the rear seat, ski locker, and front bilge area will all have bags. My original estimates were 300-350# each. That gives me a total of 900-1050# all hidden. I'm probably going to do a little hard weight somewhere (maybe 200# or so) and play around to see what works. I also have one of those captains chair type bags that is another 250# and a small bag that is 85# I could put on the floor somewhere. So, I can really weight it up pretty good this year.

blastin "baby got back" in the culdesac ! haha

Thanks guys.

Yeah, "baby got back" is one of my older son's favorite songs. That is so funny to me because it basically came out when I was in High School. I remember bumping that song in my first car.

Keegan,

The skins were reaplced by the PO, about a year or two before I bought the boat. The thing I don't like is they reused a lot of the old wood soe there is some rot in places. Next winter I'm thinking I want to pull the skins and rebuild the frames, then put them back together.

So, yesterday we went to the lake. It went fairly well...had a couple minor issues and some observations. I'll go through them and see if anyone has any insight.

1. Raw water pump - I'm hearing a little noise from the pump. That bearing grinding kind of sound. I'm guessing the pump is nearing the end of its life. Is it possible the belts are too tight (I just replaced them)? Any idea how long I might be looking at before it needs to be replaced?

2. Clicking / popping in the tower speakers - I'm getting a clicking or popping in the tower speakers (It sounds like just the towers, but it could be because they are so amplified...maybe it's in all the speakers). It only happens when I have the power turned on to the helm. The entire sound system is isolated from the engine...seperate battery, etc. I figure I am picking up noise from something. I have the wired remote running near a lot of that wiring and it is possible RCA wires are running near something. I think I have a theory that I want to test. The clicking has a tempo to it similar to the clicking you'll hear on the depth finder pod. The signal wites to the pod are tied together with the remote. I'll test the theory by isolating them or disconnecting one or the other.

3. Ballast - Ballast seems to weight the boat well and the wake looks a lot better than last year. Filling seems to go OK, but draining is tough. I bought a aerator style pump and plumbed it / wired it up myself. I have 1-2' lead hoses on all the bags and the pump has a 2-3 lead hose on one end and a ~10' hose on the other. The pump doesn't seem to want to prime and suck the water. I had to get creative to make it work. Any thoughts? I might just bite the bullet and buy one Simer along with a long enough hose to reach the furthest bag and plumb it all in and wire it up permanent and just fill one bag at a time using the hose.

4. Noise when turning - I had a strange noise when turning when we first got going. I thought maybe I was getting some sort of cavitation. Upon further inspection it appears the swim deck corner is dragging in the water a bit on a hard turn. I don't recall it ever doing this before, but I'm a little hypersensitive to different noises right now.

5. Hard starting - I noticed sometimes the initial cranking of the engine was a little slow. Let's see if I can describe this. Instead of turning the key and it cranking at a fast an constant speed (bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, vroom...running), it is going slow the first couple cranks then picking up (bum.......bum....bum, bum, bum, vroom...running). I remember it doing this every once in a while before but it did it several times yesterday. Is this related to a tight belt situation or indicative of something else?

I'll tell ya, the boat really handles well and feels really solid. My wife noticed the biggest difference crossing over rollers when we turned around, but she said it does feel different. Noise isn't bad. Now that all the interior and floor panels is in, it got quite a bit more quiet.

Originally posted by Okie Boarder Originally posted by Keeganino Looks amazing! Is that the interior you pulled out of it or is it new. Looks brand new! My gas tank in against the transom. My 16 ft skier is very lacking in storage, and without making major mods there is not much that can be done about that. I'm assuming that you're saying the tank is back there like mine is. But does it not have much room above it? Then the rear seat sits in front of it, right?

Exactly. The tanks does not even leave enough room for a sandwich. This is the best pic I have on CCF showing the clearance. I am also trying to come closer to a restoration on my boat than a rebuild so any mods that can be seen are out. My interior will be true to the factory colors and design from 1973, except I think I am going to buckle on the vinyl floor and carpet it and the walls instead, since the walls will look all jacked up from grinding away the gelcoat and glassing the new floor to it.

Keegan...I see what you mean. No room at all.

Joey,

I put a charger in the boat at home to charge the second battery. No switch, no VSR, no on-board charger hooked to it.

Another friend recommended the pulling of the RCA's. I'm going to try that and try disabling the depth finder and see which, if either, stops the noise.

That is an interesting idea! So the radio is hooked up to the dash power and the amp just to the battery? How long will the system run off the battery alone?

Joey,

No,even the radio is hooked to that battery. Nothing audio related is connected to the boat's electrical system.

I figured out the clicking sound. It was noise coming from the depth sounder connection in the dash. It runs close to the wires for the wired remote for the stereo. I moved them farther apart and added some insulation (electrical tape) to the connection and the sound went away. When I had unplugged it, the sound went away too, so I knew that's what it was.

I think I could be having some battery issues. They sat all winter in the garage on the cold floor and I never really charged them or tended them.

The reason I'm thinking this is two problems I'm having. One is the slow start. The other has to do with the audio battery. I was increasing the gain on my tower speaker amp last night and when I turned the volume up, it would cut out. I put a volt meter on the battery and is was 11.9 V. When I would crank the sound up, it would drop to ~11 V. I charged it real good last night and tested again this morning and have the same issue. I'm at about 12.5 V no load and the moment I turn up the stereo the voltage drops to near 12 V directly proportional to the increase in volume.

I have a pretty good load tester at work we use for deep cell batteries in UPS's that I'm going to use on both batteries.

As far as starting, I have one difference from last year...a little longer cables. The negative is probably twice as long, but I also increased the size. It was 1 AWG and I took it to 2/0. It is grounded to a different spot this year and there is a possibility the gqound is weak. I'm going to load test the starting battery too. If they are questionable I'm going to seek replacement. They are only 1 year old and have a good replacement warranty.

We'll see where things go from there.

Awesome shots! Great work on the rebuild! Always good to see some finished pictures

Thanks guys. So, I'm about to be cut off huh?

Originally posted by 8122pbrainard Andy, Have you checked your "file manager" in your member control panel? I'm just wondering how much room you still have!

I just cleaned out mine.... He's been using photobucket Pete.... I've been creeping through his pictures!