Im stressed as it is , and you guy's have to post this crap

2sav

Yea, what he said !!
 Looks like I might have to bring the old boat 

Flat bottom v-drives, my tunnel hull, most tunnel hulls, do not have a cross brace.

 Good point, I never thought about flatbottoms not haveing them and my Daytona dosnt have one 

 Thanks for the suport guys !!  Its been a tough weakend.  Hes going back to the vet in the morning (not doing well) , but enough about that, I dont want to cry every time I look back at this thread later if things dont go well. 

 I did take some time and work on the boat today. I cut some LARGE drain holes in the stringers (nothing should plug these up  ) .  The great news is this thing has some realy solid stringers .  This always seams to be a trouble spot on stringers and these were perfect (no rotten wood)  .  Its amazeing to me thay have lasted this long and are in this good of shape, this thing is a 73 ( its older than my last 3 GFs  )  And I'm almost done preping the stringers for a new coat of glass.  Now the floor is another story  , thats takeing alot of time because I want to start fresh (so many old coats of glue and goo) .
 
Two months to go till Parker, and The Old School Eliminator's commin ta get ya 2sav 

 drain holes


 stringers, almost ready for glass. no more holes 


 Another question !!  This hull has no crossbrace between the stringers (front of bilge area).  It looks like it had one in the past , maybe Busby removed it because of his motor placement.  Should I replace the wood one    I will be running a verry strong rail kit in there (full length rails) and could add some crossbraces to that 

Looks good Jeff ... now you need to block out those stringers and paint them glossy black! Blacked out stringers are sick!

 Yea, thats the plan for now. 

 Not much new to report.  Just sanding away and removeing glue still  .  But I did pick up these today, 8''x50'', a little smaller than I wanted (about 11gal each I think) but the filler necks line up perfect with the spot on the hull where the old caps were. 

 nicely out of the way


 On a sad note 
  I've been spending most of my time with a verry sick friend  http://www.socaljetboats.com/index.php?topic=3352.msg47316#msg47316  .   The vet says shes not sure if hes going to make it through this one because of his age ( he seems to be giving up ) 

 Look around carefully at the scratches and under anything that you can unbolt.  Look for any colors that arent showing on the boat .   If you remove a fuel filler cap and see green, the boat has been painted.  To me it looks like a late 70s early 80s style gell design  .   I think if it was mine I would try to wet-sand and polish it.  Try a small area and see how it looks.  Heres a link showing the difference it made on one of mine .  http://www.socaljetboats.com/index.php?topic=1230.msg24647#msg24647

Well unfortunatly my boat won't be one of the boats racing. Matter of fact it wont even make it to parker,
Still have way to much to do and not enough time and money

2sav

Come on 2sav you still have 2 months, and your WAY ahead of me  ,  All you have to do is bolt that thing together , I still have a bare hull    and a trailer with one fender  .   I have faith it you, you'll have it done.  Than we'll have an unoficial battle of the project boats  !!!!!

 Ford vs Chevy   -  Cali vs Az  -  Eliminator vs Bahner.     Take your pick, and place your bets boys !!! 

 Thanks Brian and lilrick.   Funny thing is, I was thinking about putting it around 25/26''  or maybe a little more just because of the header length.  I guess Rewarder made them the right length  . Thanks for the info, its nice to know Im on the right track !!   And yes thanks for the tip, I will use the 1350 u-joints, I dont need to have problems later.

hmm, i need a dolly trailer, where are the axles?

Ralph, this trailer has some realy cool hidden features    Brians "crew" made the swing-away tounge and inside of it there is still the reciever for the long dolly tounge, and this cool little wheel piece plugs right in too.  Verry cool !!




 About all I got done tonight was to drill and plug all the old mounting holes in the stringers , I drilled them all out to 1/2'' and pluged them with 1/2'' dowels dipped in resin (had to use a hammer to tap them in) .  Next thing to do is grind the outside a little and glass them in.
 Its not much but its progress 

I think I see a water pump also, WTF? 

 Maybe thay cut some big holes in the bottom and sillyconed those radiator hoses through the hull  .

 Well I fixed the delaminated spot on the stringer today.  I cut out the bad spot, the wood was still fine (solid).  Than I ground back the good glass and reglassed that area, looks ok and sounds solid again  .  I still need to go through and plug/fill all the old holes in the stringers.



 This is the main reason Im going to paint the stringers !!   STAPLES were used to hold the carpet at one point in its life.    Thay were not from Brian/Busby, thay were under the paint/glue.



 Now for a question !
 I'm a little confused about were to place the motor in this boat.  In my old boat the back of the motor is 16'' from the transome, but Brian said he had his motor 30'' from the transome in this boat and it liked it there.  Of course he had something like 1700 HP (blown alcohol motor) and I will only have around 500 to 550 for now.  So what do you guys think would be a good place to set the motor ?   I dont mind it being forward , its only going to get 2 seats and one fuel tank (between the stringers behind the seats) .   Some people say set the motor as far back as possible, yet at the races I noticed some boats like lilricks with long driveshafts and the motors set forward 

 The Sanger looks like a nice boat, but WTF is up with this ?  It looks like it has a water pump, you can see the wp pully just behind the cover 

I say it's the fuel filter or pump.

 It usually is  , but this time the problem seems different.  When my fuel pumps/filters have gone bad in the past it would run good at idle and bad at rpm or under a load , or not run at all,  This time it ran good all the way home (250 mi, L.A. to Fresno) at 65 mph and started acting up again once it had to idle .  Idle gets low and rough, after it idles for awhile.  Strange thing is it never turned on the check engine light, even when it ran the worst .
 About 6 months ago I had to change the dist because it exploded the triger thingy, so thats new. fuel pump and filter were changed about 8 months ago .     

 Well i understand what you guys are saying about leaveing it till winter, but if i dont do it now it will never get done  . 

 

I say carpet it, and put that thing of beauty in the water

At least one of our boats has to get wet
2sav

2sav you better be kidding about selling your boat  !!!! 


  Tonight was the night to go after the spots that scared me the most ( do the worst parts first and the rest will be easy, right ? ).  This boat origanaly came with fiberglass fuel tanks and it looked like thay realy didnt want them to move.  The remnants of the glass that mounted the tanks was still down there along with a realy thick coat of resin (at least 1/4in) running all over the place for no reason.
 Its realy not as bad as it looks in the pics , the dark areas are the areas of the thick resin (so thick it looks amber colored)


 This is how thick the resin/glass was that mounted the tanks .  Luckily it didnt bond verry well to the hull.


 Btw. there is somekind of gooey layer under the glue and paint on the floor, its black and clogs up sandpaper as fast as I can change it  . Looks like somekind of undercoating the orig owner may have sprayed on or maybe its just glue , who knows at this point .  The good news is its under all the other lavers, and I was able to strip it all off at once by useing a scraper, with out doing any damage to the glass .  It came off kinda like scrapeing a gasket  .