Okay, we finally hooked up by phone.  Super nice guy.  We probably talked for almost 2 hours and though this isnt anywhere near the whole story, it gives you a smattering of what we talked about.   I cant wait to see the pictures cuz there were so many custom pieces built and unfortunately dont exist today.  Dont know what happened to those but I would love to see them.   I'll post them up as soon as I get them (though I suspect it will be a while).

Here goes

The boat was bought as a bare hull from Sanger in 1977 thru Bruce Halloway of GTH Marine after Jack Davidson had stopped selling bare hulls to the public.  The color was black with gold and orange stripes in the typical Sanger fashion.

He had full stringers installed along with the wood flooring.

The motor was a blown 468 with twin dominators running 22% over.

The boat had a Lenco multi disc clutch with air shifter to activate it.

The pump was built by Dave Bostrom of GT Boats (was GTH Marine at the time) with a AQ shaft, stainless A impeller with a “fuel” cut.  Custom cut shoe and loader.  Double drilled bowl and long droop with a race nozzle with inserts. He said at the time, it was the very best of the best in parts.   The pump was fully pinstriped inside and out.  Unfortunately, the pump is no longer in this boat but the suction housing is the original one given that there’s pinstriping in the intake area.

Mike Farley did the paint including the pinstriping, numbering and murals. I’ll be honest, the name didn’t ring a bell to me but as soon as I started surfing the web I found many of his works on both boats as well as race cars.   Gonna have to do more research here.

The trailer was custom built for the boat with completely ground and smoothed welds, braided wiring (still present) and pinstriped throughout.  The hubs were drilled for both Chevy and Ford pattern.

A Halon fire suppression system was installed with hardlines throughout.  Nozzles on the gunnels as well as mounted solid to the motor on the heads.

The Cav plate hardware was built by George Shilala of Finishline.   

All the custom machine work, rail kits, tiller for the Calgo steering as well as the aluminum seat frames were done by his friend Don La Franchi.  Don’s a master sheetmetal man as well as a self taught machinist and has such attention to detail that he was knicknamed many years ago “Sano Don”.

A good friend that worked at Roy Brizio Street Rods assisted in getting all the hardware anodized (including the AN fittings) in matching colors. The wiring as well as the sparkplug wires were all custom colored to match the paint.  The boat was sponsored by Sanderson Headers so needless to say, he ran those headers.

The boat competed in the 1979/1980 season of the ISCA circuit ultimately winning the national championship in both Custom Boat and Comp Boat.  It was so successful and dominating that the judges were having to break out the catagories as many protested it’s dominance.   He still has the plaques as well as trophies and it was incredible to listen to him read off all the awards he still has.

At the time it was named the champion, it was the first Jet boat to when the championship. 

It was retired as I mentioned at previously at Lake Shasta with much fanfair.   He sparingly used it for a year or so before he ended up selling the hull to a friend for $7000 in around 1983.

He still has many of the judges sheets, trophies, awards, display boards as well and 100’s of pictures and is working on putting together a portfolio for my son along with a few parts that he still has.

He has some great stories like when he was at either the Oakland Roadster Show or the Cow Palace (I cant remember which he said) when there was a protest that his engine was a dummy and didn’t run.   He was given 3 hours to prepare it (never kept oil or gas in it so there were no chances of leaks) and swap out the exhaust (didn’t want to blue the chrome Sandersons).   He got that all done and had some zoomies mounted up and much to the disappointment of his competitors, fired the engine.  The boat was alongside one of the walls and the exhaust from the zoomies blew some banners loose from the walls  and they came down floating down on the crowd and show cars.   

I’m gonna continue to search some of this out but regardless, this is fun stuff.

What an interesting story.  I bought a bare hull from Bruce and Dave and am currently overhauling it.  I would like to get in contact with them.  As I recall, my hull was actually made by "Fiberglass West".  Somewhere around here I have some paper work from back then.  Time to dig through some boxes.

I used it on mine and let it sit then pressure wash it off worked great did it to my bowl to stipoed it good

Do you recall the brand?

What is the capacity of the tanks?

Are they leak free?

How much do they weigh?

I used the cresent shaped blade for most of the cutting then used the narrow straight blade in tight places.

What a nice day.
It was in the 60's.
I made some progress with the stringers.
I ran them through the planer and rounded the edges with my router.
I also belt sanded them with 80 grit.
The cross pieces are there to set the spacing for the motor mounts.
Tomorrow I want to seal the stringers with resin and then I should be able to glass them in.

Polish that bad boy up.

If you used SS, it would polish up like those tanker trucks running the roads.

You would need lots of sunscreen.

Great.

Size and contrast are now good.

Thanks

OK.

I was able to make a contribution using the "Tip Jar" on the home page.

I would like to see more contrast between the text and the back ground.

Perhaps you can change to black text on the current background.

Just my $0.02

Here are a few pics that came out clear. Besides being a bit cold it was a good time and as always it was nice to see everybody again.

The custom single outlet header is cool.

How did it sound?

Sounds good.

How about sharing the reciepe.

The new Xbox 360 with Kinect is amazing.  My son has one.  Watching him and his friends play with it seems like it is magic.

It is supposed to be kiln dried spruce.

You can use it as a straight edge.

My FIL had 2 16' pieces that a neighbor had given him.

This lumber has been stored for many years.

Taking the first cut was tough.

Well the problem is my pump was goin bad in a big way (I found metal shavings in the jet/motor cooling hoses). I was hydro locking at The Delta and I started to suspect something clogging waterflow. I pulled off hose that feeds BBF and found metal shavings (aluminum), then went to front of moter where impeller set up is and took about a TBL. spoon of fillings blocking the flow path. Gonna rebuild pump W/(Dave GT BOATS) thanks for all input givin.

Can you give me contact information for GT Boats.  I'm curious if this company is related to the GT Boats that was in Pacheco during the late 70's, early 80's.

Thanks