Here are some pictures with some of the boat stripped and partially sanded, the lighting in my shop is not very good, I was trying to keep the birds out. I couldn't get all of the hardware off simply because I could not access the bolt heads and or nuts behind panels or under fiberglass. It won't be as well done as yours but I am sprucing it up a little. I just finished repainting the red last night and have all the plywood cut out for the new foam and vinyl. I will get some more pictures in a couple days, the paint seems good and dry but I am not going to bring it out of the shop just yet to be sure.
Marc, That would be great. I bought a tune up and repair manual from ebay for a 68-85 because that was the closest i could find and thought it would give me some insight i things i needed to know. I am a little concerned about the out drive. My upper gear box does not have a dipstick or a fill plug but just below it there is a dipstick and i'm not sure if somehow it moves the oil up from the intermediate housing into the upper gear box? Also the very bottom drain plug does not seem to be connected to the other two plugs on the unit. I thought the next plug up would be the fill plug for the bottom housing but again i am not sure. Any advise would be appreciated. My email is raulston7@live.com Thanks!
I sent both the Hydrodyne manual and the workshop manual. Please confirm you received both files. I had to send 2 emails due to the size of each manual. I printed them, hole punched them, put them in a binder, separated them with page separators and tabs, and highlighted all the applicable sections because the manuals cover several configurations that were available for the boat. Organizing them this way really made it easy to flip through the binder and locate the necessary information in a quick and easy to find way. I had a local shop rebuild the carbs and when I handed them the binder, they were shocked. The shop asked me right away if the boat was for sale. As for the outdrive, when you remove it, you can see the channel for the oil flow to the upper portion of the unit. I unscrew the plug at the bottom of the unit to drain it, and fill through the dipstick hole. It can be tricky to find the level until the oil has settled into all the void spaces in the unit. I enjoyed the process of rebuilding the boat and am happy to answer any and all questions you have. I spent a lot of time researching and would be happy to spare a fellow hydrodyner of the hassle I went through to obtain all the information I have acquired.
As for our boat, we did not repaint any of it. We used an expensive marine grade 2-step rubbing compound and cleaner wax (using several passes) to buff out the original color on the seats and deck. It shows signs of wear in certain places from the years of use, but being as it was a family boat, we chose to leave the imperfections for sentimental value. We will probably repaint the steering wheel at some point using the factory enamel spray paint, but haven't done so yet. The gauge bezel took 4 tries to paint it correctly due to the texture of the bezel. It ended up with 4 coats of gloss black and 4 coats of clear. The most tricky part of repainting the bezel was sanding the volvo logo to expose the logo in between the black and clear coats. It came out very nice after all the effort though. I have a local gauge rebuilder that I plan to take the guages to in order to have the sun-weathered backgrounds refurbished to like-new condition. Any exposed wood I coated with fiberglass resin to further protect and waterproof(including the wood for the upholstery. I went with a 2-stage foam on all the upholstery. The first layer was a thin(maybe 1/4") foam/cloth backing that I wrapped around the edges of the wood to provide a cushion around the edges. Next I used a 2-3" foam on top for comfort with 3M adhesive to glue together. We tried to keep everything as original as possible as if it was done in the 60s but made small changes to enhance the longevity and appeal.
I did receive both manuals, Thank you! I can't download the pictures of the new red paint on here due to file size, I can email them to you if you would like to see them. I used 1/2" foam for the armrests and back of front seats, then 2" foam for the backrests of both front and back seats and also the front bench thinking it had the shock and springs it would be sufficient enough, I used 4" foam for the back bench. I have not reinstalled the seats yet but that is what the foam measured so i hope it is correct. I had a little difficulty getting the vinyl wrapped around the inside of the plywood on the cutouts of the back front seat and front seat armrests, i may have to take them off at a later date and take them to a professional.
Wrapping the cut-outs is an art in itself. I wrapped over the holes, then cut a big slit across the hole. Then I made multiple cuts (but not too far as to show the cuts on the outside) so I could wrap the material around the curves. I'll upload a bunch of pictures in a few minutes for you to see a little closer. Feel free to email me anything you can't post.
Its interesting how our engine cowl is above the deck and yours is flush to the deck. Small differences. We had to put a new water pump housing in because the old one started leaking water into the oil. We moved the battery away from the exhaust which also made it easier to access when the engine cowl was up. For the floor, we used a product called KiwiGrip which is a roll-on marine grade deck material (about $50 a quart but comes with the textured roller). We chose to roll the texture on the bottom, but used a paint brush to put a smooth surface on the sides and the engine cowl. I know I should have put a smaller length screw on the shock but it was a leftover and didn't matter much at the time so don't laugh! FYI: I had trouble uploading 2 of the files because of size. I chose to crop the photos using Microsoft Paint and they lowered the file size enough for me to upload them.
Our fuel pump diaphragm was shot and leaking when we got the boat and found a fuel pump from a volvo p1800 car (the boat motor is the same as the p1800 car) that works great and was about $40 shipped. An electronic fuel pump was considered, but the manual crankshaft-driven fuel pump from the p1800 allowed us to keep the same fuel pump location and not have to fab a plate to cover the hole. We did have to remove the spacer from the old fuel pump because the new part did not need spacing. I probably went overboard with the staples on the upholstery, but at 25,000/box I had plenty to go around and figured the material wouldn't stretch and sag later down the road.
I sent some pictures to you through my yahoo account a couple days ago. My boat already had an electric fuel pump, i didn't even look to see if they plated off the manual pump. I can't believe that i got it running so easily after around 27 years and it sounds really good. Looks like they had to repair a crack on the exhaust manifold, it leaks a little bit of water but i can't tell exactly where it is leaking so i think i will just let it be for now so i don't make it worse, it is not getting in the oil. I will be installing an automatic bilge pump for peace of mind. I put the windshield back on yesterday and darn it i scratched the paint a little in one spot, I put tape on all the studs to try and avoid that but i guess that's what i get for being impatient and doing by myself in 15 to 20 mile an hour wind.
