Droptop's 1985 Convincor Twin Outboard Restore Thread

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Well gang I searched high and low and thought I was buying a good clean boat but I guess it wasn't as good as I hoped. I know some of you have seen how this boat came together with a hull from Minnesota and motors from Florida with the marriage that happened in Virginia.

I spent all summer burning dinosaurs and working with some great Checkmate members (Demag67, Viper 1, Ramifications, Jupiter Pulsare, SCT, Knarloid, Instigator, and more I'm sure) trying to get things sorted out but I was never able to get it running the way it should. I had fun but it never handled properly and would porpoise violently without the crappy little trim tabs buried.

Last December a few of us gathered in the Philly area for a get together with our families and Demag67 (Bruce) said I should bring up my boat and he'll help me work on it though the winter. I graciously accepted his offer and one thing kept leading to another.

One clear brisk weekend Ramifications (Spencer) stopped over and we decided to tear into things. We already had the motors off and we peeled off a big piece of aluminum off the back and this is my story.

 

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Well as it turn out the transom had quite a bit of water intrusion and it was soft and rotten in many places. And a notable mention, it was a good thing I never tried and tow anything as the stern eyes were pretty much only held in with a Bondo type substance.

 

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Most of the Fiberglass products came from US Composits. We cut out the original cross member and made it much bigger. We decided to go with a pour in transom and I chose to use a SeaCast variant that used little pieces of carbon fiber.

 

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We now have the makings of a beefy cross member. For more strength, Bruce suggested that we tie the knees to the splashwell. We made a template from some cheap pegboard type material from Lowes and covered it with mold release to create a space to make the knees bigger that would be filled with SeaCast.

 

[RNGRDVE]

Looks good. Did the porpoise calm down?

 

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Merry Christmas to me. 25 gallons of SeaCast.


The old skin had more holes in it than a golf course so we decided to make a new skin in place of using the old one.

 

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Here goes nothing!

 

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Mark up time:


Measure 10 times drill once:

 

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Just in case a carbon fiber transom is not strong enough Bruce welded up some aluminum plates for the inside for more support. This is so we can put twin 400's on there when the weight comes down.

 

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So you know when your out of money and you really want something. Big Kiekhaefer 280 K planes was that thing for me. I searched and searched and found two guys selling them at a reasonable price. I chose a guy in NC and basically got a pile of half junk. Bruce was knowledgeable of these things and was able to make them work. He built new brackets that look awesome and clean.

I need to give a shout out to Sammie as well. I was thinking of going with something else and so happy I didn't. thanks Sammie!

 

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Does anyone remember this big ole pile? Inside you may see a Capilano helm and Latham steering. Well that finally got put to use.


Bruce made a nice plate and got the helm mounted and found an old steering wheel in has garage that looks great. And if you look close you will see a fill reservoir for the helm. The trim and tabs switches were on the left but the throttles were on the right. This always made driving fast a little tricky.


The trim and tabs switches are now on the right where it makes more sense.



We ran 5/8" copper from the helm to the stern where the rubber hoses tie in.

 

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So after many months of hard work here's the final product.

 

[Rob B]

You did a fantastic job!!! How did the seacast pour go? I've seen offshore guys use that with great success. I think Spencer is going to do a carbon pour on his boat. http://www.carbon-core.com/carbonbond-transom.htm

 

[anotherrunner83]

awesome work! kudos on the end result

 

[keith4216]

Congrats Chris and Bruce. looks like alot of hard work done pretty quick. See you in a few to check it out and get a ride.

 

[merc245]

Got to say hi to you and your wife first, doing a heckuva job. Kudos to all you East Coast guys. All You's guys are taking on quite the projects. Like a boat club the restoring the OB classics. I can see it now, everyone sitting around the fire this summer goin,rubbrubbrubble,rubbrubbrubble,rubbrubbrubble,rubbrubbrubbl

 

[keith4216]

Hopefully the bar won't get washed away this year.

 

[demag67]

Looks good. Did the porpoise calm down?

We still have to use the k planes but porpoising did calm down some. It is a lot easier to drive now then before but we will have some hull blue printing to be done after this season and that should take care of the rest of the porpoising and give us another 2 or 3 mph