Mustang 17 rebuild

Nice work.

Productive day. Painted stripes and lettering on port side today. That should wrap up the paint work. Give it some time to harden out and I can wet sand and finish buff the hull sides and bottom. BTW I have the font graphics on file if anybody else needs them. Any sign shop should be able to convert them to their file type. Not perfect but very close to original.

First "tack" coat shot


Painted and masks pulled

Thanks for the kind words!! Hope to flip it back onto it's feet soon. Hope the Reunion listings will start showing up so I can plan on attending some events. Duane

Awesome Job so far!

Nice job Duane! Hope to see it in person someday

Well back on the hull again. Flipped it back on it's feet again. Prepped the deck and shot the gel coat. Hopefully that is the last of the gel to shoot. Ground out a lot of stress cracks and filled them in along with numerous screw holes that are no longer needed.   Give it a few days to cure out and then wet sand and buff. Appointment with the interior guy to lay the carpet in a week. Busy week in store.

Prepped and ready


Gel shot


I stripped the vinyl off the 3 scoops and they are in such good shape I a considering shooting a quick coat of gel on them instead of recovering. They could be used as is except the color might be off a bit.

Hi Duane

How about solid blue gelled scoops front and rear?

I think that would look good, but then I'm not looking at it in person

Aren't there lotsa screw holes in those scoops? I don't remember..

I say leave it gelled with the stripe going through it.

Almost 16 months since she was in the water.   New stringers, gel coat, floors, no foam except underside of bow cap, new .060 engine with many mods.   Anyway made it to the lake today and lake conditions were terrible. White caps 3 feet high. Launched and finally found some decent water. Running an ACME 540 prop. Have a 5400 RPM rev limiter chip in the MSD box. Made a few passes to get a feel and then made several aggressive passes. I have a set of manually adjustable trim tabs that I will photo in the morning that were set flat, with no trim added.   Boat porpoised some at around 45 - 48 mph.   Not bad but noticeable. It easily drove thru them and at 5200 RPM was showing 56 MPH on first pass. Return pass was up to almost 60 MPH. Acceleration was unbelievable compared to the stock engine. Never did let the boat run on out since the engine has such low hours and the 5400 chip. Really don't want to exceed 5400 anyway.   I will put a little trim in it and try some more. I can see where more prop would help or just live with what I have and not push the envelope.
Now the bad:    Lost reverse somehow. Will trouble shoot that tomorrow and see where that leads. 1200 hours on the tranny so it may get a total rebuild.
Temps and pressures were right where I want them on the engine. More later,   Duane
FloTek heads must be doing their job!!

Nice to have some power on tap for when three or four friends all want to barefoot at once! 60 mph. Dang. Wait until she's broken in.

Reverse. Yeah. Time for some rebuilt action. Better now and DIY than mid-season. I'm really impressed with your craftsmanship, Duane.

How do any of you get rid of that bounce without risking planting the nose?

Looking forward to seeing and taking a ride in this boat at lakes James in July.

Carb is setting perfectly flat now. Milled the intake manifold as much as the casting would allow and then machined a wedge spacer to make it level. Quite a bit of wedge added to achieve getting it where I wanted it.

These are the manually adjustable tabs. Milled pockets in the hull so they sit flush when not deployed and will create no drag. They are attached at the front and you just loosen the wing nuts and move the rear down and relock. They are approx 6 inches square. May never use them but they are there to play with. Exhaust flapper is visible also.

Very impressive. My hats off to you

Bummer on the tranny. Bring a real GPS along next time, or download the Navionics app, that has proven to be accurate.