85 2001 LVL Stringer Project

MI-nick wrote: did the leak from the bowl plugs stop??

I forgot to mention that, Yes. They have not leaked a drop since they did last week. There must be some kind of a seal that swells to seal things up in there.

Very creative on those seat tracks! You definitely werent supposed to get 2 latched tracks... only one needs the lever, the other just floats. You may want to consider putting the lever on the port side- it would be very hard to reach down the side of the seat on the stbd side once its installed in the boat.

You also make a very strong case for buying new hubs rather than just bearings and seals! Not sure what quality of bearings the replacement hubs normally come with, but it doesnt sound like your way was better in regards to cost effectiveness.

Be sure to err on the side of overtight on the hub install, as opposed to too-loose. They'll loosen up a little bit as they break in. Make sure you check them frequently the first few trips! Wobbly wheels are no good at all.

I had a pretty productive weekend working on the boat. I started of Friday afternoon by replacing the fuel level sender in my gas tank. I then mounted the wood strips that the tank sits on and then mounted the gas tank. I then pulled the wheel bearings and seal from the Port side. I knew they were not the best but the inside was worse than I thought!! After I pulled the bearings and races I cleaned the bearings in some mineral spirits to get all the old grease off. After doing that I had a good 1/8" play side to side in the outer cage of the bearing. The inner was not all that bad but was not perfect either. Both races had some pitting in them and the grease that came out of the hub was rust brown and the seal was completely shot.







Saturday I had to take care of a few things for my Mom first thing then it was off to Napa for some bearings. I took the bearings in and let them look everything up. I did not think of checking here for the numbers. I should have!! They had the inner and outer bearings in stock but did not have the seal in stock. They told me that the warehouse downtown did have them. I decided to check the other autoparts places to see if they had the seal. Auto zone, Advance Auto Parts and Oriley's all did not have it. So I took off to go down town to get the seal from the warehouse.

The lady at the warehouse was clueless!! I did not get the part number from my local napa and since she did not have a number to look up she could not help me. Thanks to technology I finally thought to look it up here on my phone and found the part number. She told me that the number I found here was not a number in her system. But she somehow found a part and had it brought up to me. I compared it to what I had and it was the right size, It just had an inner and outer wall on it (only 1 seal though). So I told here I needed 2 I got those then she told me the total I nearly fell out. $33 a piece!!!    That is more than the freaking huge inner bearings!! It was around 2 at this point and I wanted to get to work I went ahead and paid for it and walked funny back to my truck after being raped!!

I get back home get the races installed, bearings packed, (This is a handy tool to have by the way) seal installed and go to slide the hub on the spindle but the inner bearing does not fit. I pull the bearing back out and sure enough the ID is too small. So another trip back to Napa, this time with the PN from here, only to find out that they do not have that part in stock. So that means another trip to a store about 15 miles away. I get those and get back home and everything finally goes back together and that axle is completed.

I needed to pull the boat out to get to the other wheel and it was getting too late for that so I grabbed my seat base and put on my new slides. When I ordered them, I do not know if it was supposed to come this way or not but I received 2 of the slides that locked. I did not want to send one back and wait for a regular slide to come in so I just took a piece of threaded rod and put 2 90's in it then bottom nut and washer. Put it through a hole on both slides then a top washer and nylock nut. It works like a charm.





Sunday I got up and pulled the boat out first thing. Off came the hub this one has had water in it as the grease is all milky color and the bearings are all rusty. I replaced everything and put it all back together with new fresh marine grease and topped it off with the bearing buddy. After it was all back together I cleaned up the old bearings (I like to clean them up removing all the grease to see the condition that they were in. These were both completely rusted but the inner bearing was tighter than the other side. All in all the bearings, races and seals were absolutely needed on this trailer!!

Jllogan wrote: there has also been a rash of faulty needle and seats. I replaced mine and that solved the issue.

I do not think this will be the problem because the boat ran for 2 years after I rebuilt the carb without leaking. I could be wrong though we will see.

MI-nick wrote: Big Pappa wrote: One thing I did notice after letting the boat run for a minute was the carb was leaking from the metal plugs on top of both the front and rear bowls. I will have to figure out a way to seal these up before running any more. i had the same issue this summer. i rebuilt the carb over the winter and it sat dry until spring. first time i fired it up in april, it was leaking out those plugs. after sitting for a night with the bowls full, it didn't leak in the morning...and still no leaks. hopefully you have the same luck.

Yea I saw where you mentioned this in another post. Crossing fingers to hope that this is the case for me as well!!!

Nice work!

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.

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.

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

Would it go bad just sitting?

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.

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

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!

Looking great!

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.

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.