The 81’s ready to roll

Well here's a couple of quick snapshots between rain drops today of my winter project.

New goodies include, all new interior, carpet, new fuel lines, electronic ignition conversion, wet sand and buff the entire boat, striped and repainted stripes, wet sanded and buffed stripes today in the rain, depth sounder, low oil presuure/ high water temp alarm and basic tune up, OJ dripless shaft seal

Still on the list is to install new bunk carpet and we plan to paint the trailer to match the blue of the new stripes. Oh yeah, and I gotta replace those galvanized wheels some day. Thanks to the many folks who provided tons of info on this site so I could get this done.

Beautiful job...you should be proud!

RB

Alan (aka; magicman); WOW...WOW!! Boy you must be PROUD! What a job! Really like the look of the white and woodgrain dash. Can you get a pic of the dash on also?

Gary: Did I read correctly that you are coming down to FLA? I think we might have talked about this before but...me and mrs jbear would love to meet ya if you are gonna be close (do I remember Disney?) and have a little time. If so and you want my numbers send me a e-mail, it is in my profile.


john

Alan,
Awsome job! The thing that makes it even more amazing is knowing the "wonderful" northern IL winter conditions that you did most of the work in!!!!!!!!!!

jbear , you got that sandpaper out yet?

John...I did mention it a while back...we are going to be in Key West. Leaving Thurs and flying back tues.How far are you from the Keys?

Thanks everyone, I'm pretty happy with the results although I learned a lot and would do a few things different next time. I'll be redoing the gel coat repairs over again next winter because i did a crappy job matching the color, DavidF must be a magician because that ain't as easy to do as it sounds. I'll just use it as is this summer, time to start having some fun.

62, Lousy weather right down to the end. I had the boat at the body shop for 2 weeks waiting for it to be wet sanded and buffed. I finally picked it up Sat afternoon and it had not even been touched. I stole a buffer, paper, compound and took the boat home and got it done in a couple hours Sunday in the rain. I wonder how long it will take before the body guy notices that it's gone. One thing for sure is he won't get his buffer back until I get the touchup paint he promised. Lesson learned, DO IT YOURSELF.

The motor on this one is solid and I don't want to touch it. So I'm now in the market for a basket case Tique or something smaller that I can take my time on and turn into a little hot rod.

81nautique wrote: ...DavidF must be a magician because that ain't as easy to do as it sounds....

No, no magician...I can't match colors worth beans. I go the easy and expensive route by purchasing pre-matched gel coat through my local CC dealer. The color match adheres to my 5' rule: From 5', you cannot tell the difference or see the blend line. However, from 1', you can see, but just barely.

If anyone is going to the Reunion in San Antonio, the boat and I will be there even though the price went from $7/head to $20/head this year

Jbear,

The old stripes were removed by hand wet sanding and took me a couple of days and quite a few blisters. I also wet sanded all the gel coat to get some shine back. Then buffed the entire boat, several more hours. We used base coat with a clear on top so the clear had to be wet sanded with 1200 and buffed again but the shine and finish is like glass.

A lot of work but this one is my keeper so I thought it was worth it.

oldcentury76,

After we painted the stripes with color we clear coated them so all blue paint is cleared. I wet sanded and buffed the stripes but that was actually buffing the clear to a nice finish and that also softened the edges of the stripes. After I finished that I waxed the entire boat(gelcoat and cleared stripes) and buffed that off with one of those orbital polishers just like you would a car finish. We put a fairly heavy clear coat on so if I get any scuffs from dock bumpers as long as they don't go through to the color I can just wet sand and buff them out again.

Time will tell if this was the right approach but I'm very pleased with the finish.

Oldcentury,

The rub rail is original and once again I put in a lot of time with a buffer. I went to Home Depot and bought a small buffing wheel ( about 5" round) and put it in my hand drill. I used a fairly course compound and buffed the snot out of it. The finished off with neverdul and a coat of wax before putting it back on. With the course compound you can actually buff out small scratches. It came back very nicely with a bit of elbow grease.

Simply AWESOME.Last time I saw that poor boat I was thinking PARTS !! Now it looks to be the star of the fleet.Mine Hopefully should be complete before the Green Lake event.Getting ready to shred the floors with a little help this weekend.Been measuring and taking pictures for the last 2 just so it goes back together right.

raygunclan.

All new wood. It didn't look that bad until I started taking the skins off, pretty much just fell apart after that.

If you have basic carpentry skills and tools you can do the job in a couple off weekends.

I used bisquits for all joints, they help you line everything up during assembly. Then used a waterproof polyurethane wood glue like Gorilla Glue. I then used a countersink drill bit and stainless steel screws. Then I coated everything with resin and put a strip of fiberglass on all structural corners. My method is total overkill but I don't think I'll have to worry about this again for a long time.