boat rebuilds

It's been almost a year since my last post/thoughts on my boat rebuild and I could really use a bit of info. I have pulled the engine and will be dropping a new one in but........Of course there is the infamous domino effect of fixing anything old. I am up to my elbows in re doing the floor. I have removed all the old floor and foam and had a good look at the stringers and such. The wood is amazingly still good. My big headache right now is getting the ski pylon out. From what I understand there may be a pin at the bottom of the pylon holding it onto the mounting bracket on the hull of the boat. Can anyone confirm this for me? The boat is 78 and from what I can tell from other posts these older models have this style of attachment. Also the original issue that led me to doing all this work is the fact that I froze the engine. The block cracked rendering it useless, and at the same time I got a fracture line in the left exhaust manifold. I would like to get a new one asap. Any ideas? Last question, time for new foam and fibreglass floor and the options out there seem to be endless. Does anyone have any insight to what products to use , I feeling a little over whelmed by the choice. West epoxy systems have lots of options and I will call them tomorrow. Any feelings on this. Thanks to all who have helped me in the past this forum is the bomb for us first time boat reno folks

thanks for the response. I'm going to try to get a whole lot of shots to help the situation, but I need my wifes help with that, kind of sad but reality. The engine is a 351 ford windsor and the old manifolds were aluminum. I have found potential manifolds but I would like to try and match the old ones for looks and the fact that they are stock. Are there any benefits to the newer manifolds? As far as I can tell not much has been changed on the engine. Of course soon enough there will be a new long block dropped in.

scooter wrote: have removed all the old floor and foam and had a good look at the stringers and such. The wood is amazingly still good.

If you went to the trouble of removing the floor and foam, I assume it was because there was rot present? If so, I am very doubtful that your stringers are in as good of shape as you seem to think. I would dig further and be sure of this before buttoning it back up.

scooter wrote: My big headache right now is getting the ski pylon out. From what I understand there may be a pin at the bottom of the pylon holding it onto the mounting bracket on the hull of the boat. Can anyone confirm this for me? The boat is 78 and from what I can tell from other posts these older models have this style of attachment.

Since youve already got it apart, wouldnt the easiest way to tell how the pylon attaches be to look? My '79 only sat in the cup- no pin.

Brian, fwiw, 78's had PCM's at least as an option. MY 78 martinique has a PCM 351W and it has the same pyramid manifolds as newer pcms.


The 78 has no pin down below, just a socket as Pete describes.

Scooter, there are a lot of very good threads on stringer replacements on this site that should answer 99% of your questions. Simply do a search with the key word "stringer"

This thread covers just about everything from beginning to end. The pylon separation is somewhere in the middle.