Exciter Overhaul

[jallen355]

I guess I'm kind of starting at the end here becuase it's all but finished now. Just need to upholster the bench seat that I redesigned and reconstructed. That and a couple other minor details will be a wrap. I swapped some labor with a friend of mine the other day and he did a really nice job of fitting the carpet which was the last thing standing in the way of me completing the rerigging of her.

I got to test run it yesterday evening before the sun went down. It was a blast out in the lake topping the 1-3 footers over to the Parish Line Canal and back. Here's a few parting shots.








I took lots of pictures along the way of the destruction, rotted wood, etc., as well as, lots of pics of the reconstruction of a new dual stringer system, flooring and transom knees all out of "Cooa Board" which is a fiberglass reinforced polyurethane foam board that will not rot again. The boat is now stronger and lighter than ever and has a "ton" of storage as compared to before. I even add a teak ski locker that I scored on Ebay that for some unknown reason, my boat was never equipped with.

 

[hotdaddy27]

LOOKS GREAT!!!

Congrats...Looks like the hard work paid off.

 

[jallen355]

Thanks! It has been alot of work for sure. The bulk of it began on Feb. 6 when the rot removal started. The pics above were taken yesterday after I got it wet for the first time since Feb. 5th.

When I bought the boat, it was an incompleted project. The previous owner had the boat painted and a new wiring harness and some new gauages in it along with a new "single cable" steering setup for the 150 hp. No front seats at all, no carpet and the rest of the upholstery was at least in tact but in need of replacement.

There was a section of floor between the rear seat and the back side of the front seat mounts that had been replaced at some point in the past. Immediately in front of and behind the patch panel, there were a couple of "small" soft spots. Here's what I found when I removed the patch panel that had been installled.




Notice the pry bar is pushed into a completely rotten single center mounted stringer. It "was" merely a 3/4" piece of plywood that had two or three places along its length where some glue or something tried to hold it in place.

 

[jallen355]

In the next pic, I had layed the patch panel back in place to have something to work from and began cutting along the perimeter of the floor from the transom all the way to the raised portion of the floor under the fore deck (play pen) which was found to still be solid.



The wood I exposed here along with all the remaining wood from the entire floor panel and stringer was loaded into a single garbage can...one "handful" at a time. I'm talking mulch here fella's. It was nasty.

The foam was not (too my surprise) saturated. It came out, for the most part, in complete pieces. I opted NOT to reinstall it, however.

 

[jallen355]

I should take a minute a explain a few more things here. Remember, this is a synopsis of a restoration in reverse. In the pics above, you will see a full compliment of gauges, a nice sternin' (steering) wheel, fire ext., hot foot, switch panel, and even a 12V aux. power supply (which I finally wired today...lol). All of which I had installed since purchasing the boat last summer and obviously before I began the rot repair.

What you do not see that I have already done prior to this phase is the complete dash re-wiring using the new Mercury harness the previous owner had "kind of" installed, a freshly overhauled 150 hp Merc by my friend Mike (T-Rex....king of the 2-liter) had rebuilt for me after, me in all my "stupity", proceed to destroy on the first run after purchasing the boat and a fresh lower unit that was overhauled by my bud David @Performance Marine around the corner from my house. More on the lower later in this thread....

 

[jallen355]

The following pics were taken after all of the rotten wood (so I thought) had been removed...... You can see where I stopped removal going forward. The stringer and the raised floor in the "play pen" were still solid and did not deem removal/replacement. Notice, however, that the rear corner flotation boxes and the starboard side battery tray are still in tact. More on them later.....

 

[jallen355]

Here I have begun grinding the hull bottem in preperation for coming back up with the new stuff. There's a few things that I haven't removed yet like the foot throttle, extinguisher, stainless rails under deck and the old stern light holders. At this point I know my coring is solid. The transom was also found to be solid as a rock......knock on wood....pun intended.


Sounds like a "walk in the park" right????




Here is the new Coosa Board stringer system I fabbed up and have fitted at this point. Notice the drain holes throughout. No water will "sit" in this hull again.

 

[Rob B]

Jallen355 That's a great job you've done. I hope my floor resto will go as quickly in the fall/winter of this year. More details please

 

[MateFever]

Excellent work man!!! Truly one of the best looking boats on here and the best looking Exciter I've ever seen.

 

[jallen355]

Thanks guys, but it's not over yet.

While grinding the hull bottem for adhesion of the upcoming glass work, I "knicked" the bottem edge of the starboard side battery tray a few tmes along the way. Refering back to this pic you can see the starboard battery tray/floatation box assembly befire it was removed.....


Oh, I'd say about the ump-teenth time I hit it with my Dewalt, I got a surprise! The bottem of my freshly ground hull started filling up with WATER!!!! WTF??? The starboard side battery tray/floatation box enclosure had been holding water!!! I stuck my grinder into the edge and held on until she bogged down and begged for mercy.... I climbed out as the water trickled out. Then, I went inside, showered and jumped in the sack!

The next day, I cut into the port side box and found it to be dry as a bone. Unbelievable!!! Seems like the only way I could figure the water got in was through the stern light fitting topside on the starboard side over the years. Needles to say, I resealed that booger.

Anywhoo, I knew I had no choice but to "86" the battery tray. I'm glad I did. It was nothing more than more "mulch"!! Then I figured I better go ahead and remove the floatation box/foam, too. I started to cut it out and found that the inside wall actually made the transom knee/support and was rotten from the bottem up about 4" so I cut it completely out. It WAS made out of a couple of pieces of 3/4" thick pieces of plywood that was not laminated in glass very well. I'm sure glad I found this rot, too. I'd hate to have my motor drop to the bottem of the river when my transom broke off. I wish I'd have taken a pic at this point, but I was kind of covered up with glass and foam dust and didn't want to trash my camera.

I decided to sand/shape the foam floatation back, saving a good portion of it, and build an enclosure panel out of the coosa board. Here's a pic of the battery tray removed, the transom knee gone and the fabbed up coosa panel shaped and fit into place to fit over the remiaing floatation.



I this pic, you can see where the transom knee used to be. It had formed the inside most wall of the floataion box. If you look close at the transom, you'll see the "ghost" from where it was originally glassed in.

 

[Old Hickory]

Looks really good; you'll be thrilled to know I've decided to at least use Coosa on my transom and to patch all of my cut outs. I will probably also use it to rebuild the stern end of the deck. I started putting together all the pics of my transom removal and didn't have time to post em' this weekend. That takes almost as much time as fixin this stuff Good job, can't wait to see more.

BTW, how did you set up drainage for the port and starboard side of your stringers? Didn't see any drain holes.(saw the ones running down center line)

Hick

 

[jallen355]

I think you made a good decision there. Your going to like working with the stuff and the end results you will have.

Your right about the time it takes to document and "tell the story".

That pic of the strigers was when they were being desgined and fitted. They weren't installed at that point. I actually totally encapsulated them in mat during install. The first thing I had to do was to turn them upside down and glasss the bottem edges which was kind of a battle to get all the drain holes, including the drain holes at the very rear bottems where the stringers meet the transom glassed in as smoothly as I could.

At this point I decided to begin glassing what I had. I started with a layer over the transom to seal any spots I might have knocked open with the grinding done during the destruction. I also glass in the coosa panel to close up the remaining foam in the starboard side rear corner.

Another thing I did to help facilitate water leaving the hull was to build up the floor of the bildge right in front of the drain plug hole. It is installed too high off the floor IMHO. A few layers of glass and it is now much better.

 

[zstevens]

awesome job looks great !

 

[jallen355]

Thanks, Zach.

Next stop... "Second Floor"!

 

[jallen355]

At this point, I've decided to go ahead and install the floor to make it easier to continue on with remaining repairs like building transom knee(s) and removing/modifying the port side flotation box which I figure now is rotten to some extent just as the starboard side was found to be.

With the floor panel cut and shaped to fit the hull from a 1/2" thick piece of coosa board that comes 8' long, (did I mention how easy this stuff is to work with?) I find I need to add a second piece nearly 12" long to complete the floor panel that is close to 9' long from the fore deck to the transom and decide to section it under the rear deck below where the fuel tank will eventually be installed. Hence the extra, double thick bulkhead that was installed towards the rear.

Here is the main floor panel flipped upside down with a single layer of mat laminated to the underside.



Here is the same panel with the excess mat trimmed around the edges and ready to drop in and laminate in the hull.

Hint: Excess fiberglass can be easily trimmed with a utility knife when it starts to kick but before it completely cures.

 

[jallen355]

The stringers were 5200'd down (which "someone" accidentally deleted the pics from my digi cam)and weighted down in place for 4 days. 5200 takes a solid week to cure in southern heat and humidity, btw. Then they were completely encapsulated in a layer of mat.

The floor was then 5200'd on top of the stringers, clualked around the perimeter w/5200 and weighted down for yet another week. Finally, I was then able to go ahead and laminate the floor panels in with 2 layers of mat on the topside. That makes a minimum of 3 layers of mat encapsulating a 1/2" coosa board floor. This thing is light weight and super tuff.

 

[jallen355]

Now with the complete floor installed, I turn my attention to the topside of the floor. The first thing I need to address is the port side flotation box. On the port side box, there was no battery tray installed. The only tray was on the starboard side. I did not understand why it was done this way....both battery and driver on the same side with no other heavy items or offset construction designs to counter the weight inbalance. I will address this in the future.

I decide to cut open the leading/front walls first to expose the flotation inside and to inspect the integrity of the prot side transom knee. The first surprise was that no water leached out when I first cut it open. The second surprise was that the prot side transom knee was perfectly preserved. Again, this was something I did not quite understand as I found upon the restore that the knee had not even been completely encapsulated in glass during it original construction and was in fact "mostly" covered with paint!

Here are pics of the floatation box, in tact, before the floor panel had been installed followed by several pics of the front walls after there removal showing the flotation that I opted to remove and the foam I opted to save all shaped to facilitate another coosa board closure panel. The same as was done on the starboard side. Only difference is I eleceted to not cut out the port sde transom knee as it was "good to go".







In the last two pics, you can really get an idea of where the factory chose to laminate the knees with glass and where they were simply painted. It's amazing to me that even one of them lasted nearly 30 years.

 

[jallen355]

Next comes the transom knees which the factory had located just outside of where the floor panel met the hull. I used a piece of carboard to make a replica of the remaining port side knee to make 4 pieces total out of the coosa board.

The original knees were 1" thick. I opted for the new knees to be 1.5" thick. On the port side, I simply added one piece of coosa board to the original knee that did not need to be replaced to thicken it and make it match the thickness of the new starboard side knee which was fabricated from 3 pieces of 1/2" coosa board shown below. Notice the bevel to match the hull dead rise on the bottem edge of the knee.

 

[jallen355]

Next, I 5200'd the starboard side transom knee in place and screwed and glue the additional 1/2" thick panel in place on the inside of the existing port side knee. You will also see some misc. pieces of coosa laying around that will become dual battery trays in the future.

 

[jallen355]

Now those dual battery trays I mentioned have been constructed and glued in place with more 5200. They are constructed from coosa bulkheads and walls with 1/2" plywood floors that have been resin coated both top and bottem. The only short coming I have found with coosa is it's fastener holding ability. I opted to use wood for the tray bottems so I could screw down battery hold downs. I also resin coated 3 additional wooden blocks and glassed them in place to have something to screw my fuel tank in place. If they ever do rot, they can be easily cut out and replaced as they are above the floor.