1963? Hydrodyne custome deluxe 1700 restoration thread

Nice work Brian. Mine is outside in a carport and it has been too cold to do any work. I see you left a small area un-cored - I assume for a bilge pump?

 

yes, the small area is set up for the bilge pump. I also got my new battery holder Friday, so I need to cut a couple strips of plywood, resin and glass them - then glass into the hull. That will give me something to attach the battery holder to without going into the core. Anything that gets screws will be screwed into another piece of wood that is glassed, but seperated from the core. Do not want to do that again.....

 

Boat is still upside down, been busy..... on everything except the dyne!

So I did do the patching under the deck. I cut out a few areas of glass that was covering the balsa core and let it dry out. A few of these were pretty bad where the windshield was bolted through, so I removed that balsa. New strips were cut that were 3/8" thick and pieced in. Resin was then mixed up with cabosil thickener, the underside of the deck wash brushed and the bottom of the balsa was coated as well. The peices were all pressed into place and a few of the remaining odd shaped voids were filled with the extra thickened resin.

New resin was then mixed up and everything that had the glass removed was wetted out. Anywhere that adhesion was suspect, extra resin was poured onto the wood and worked into any voids or seams so it could penetrate the old balsa and get to the original deck glass. Woven roving was then used to cover everything with two layers of glass. At that point, I actually ran out of both hardener and glass, so I called it quits! I have another project coming up concerning a paddle board mold, so I went ahead and ordered a full 100 yard roll of 1.5 oz x 50" matt and resin. Should last me a while if wife doesn't bury me with it....

Anyways, here are a few pictures of the work I did. Most of the balsa was just fine, really only three small patches that needed to be patched back in. The only other things I am going to do under the dash is to fabricate a wood cross brace to strengthen the deck incase someone steps on it and put plywood backers where I will have things bolted to the deck (cleats, guides, lights). other than that I need to get going on sanding the bottom back down and prepping it for the epoxy sealer coats.

Included another shot of the finished transom glass work. No cutout for the outdrive yet, but I did drill the six holes for the outdrive bolts. have to get a new bit in the holesaw kit and get to work on the transom. New glass and resin are due here later this week.

Brian

 

Been absent awhile, need to do an update. But the boat bottom needs a couple of spot putty touch up sanded and it is ready for paint! I will have to get some pictures and post them, it is looking pretty good I think.

 

As the pictures above show, the boat is upside down on the trailer. I had all kinds of popped gelcoat on the bottom, so it was attacked with a 7” sanding disc to remove loose or cracked gelcoat. Next up was filling in the bottom and sanding it back down smooth, this is where my problem developed. I decided to use Bondo to fill the hull bottom, but wanted to thin it out some so I could float it out over the bottom of the hull.

It really worked pretty well and looked like a decent start, until I went to sand it and found it had not fully hardened. If I hit it with any sand paper, it just gummed up right away. And not like the thin uncured layer on Bondo, I mean the whole thing. You would sand about 5 seconds and soft balls of bondo would start forming. It just didn’t kick off. In the end, I figured out that the Bondo hardener was old and this is a problem. I have thinned the bondo with polyester resin before, so that should not have caused it, but others have had happen what I experienced with old hardener. I wasted a bunch of time this winter and spring waiting for it to harden off. Letting it set. Getting it out in the sun on a sunny warm day. Putting a heat lamp on part of it. Trying to put a primer over the bondo to see if it was air inhibited. Tried removing it again with an air chisel. Tried an air sander. Finally, a 3” x 21” belt sander with 36 grit belts worked wonders. But these belt sanders are not really designed to remove that much product, that fast with that much torque. Destroyed a couple of the toothed drive belts before I finally got all the old product off.

So then I was almost back to where I had started before. Again, new bondo and spreading it out, sanding, spotting, measure, spread more bondo. Back to sanding…. Finally it was done, good enough. Or I was done… not sure. But I think it looks pretty good. So today I got the first coat of TotalBoat Total Protect on it. This is a high build barrier coat two part epoxy primer paint. Thick stuff, you really have to work it to spread it out. Needs to go on pretty thin and then apply multiple coats. But it is really supposed to seal the bottom of the boat from any water absorption. I will apply two more coats tomorrow and probably one more on Wednesday. Then I will let it cure up nice and hard. Sand it out some to prep for the TotalBoat topside one part urethane paint. It is good for a weekend in the water and she is a trailer queen anyways. The barrier paint will protect the core from any water. I am going to do the inside of the boat also once everything is glassed into the hull. I am hoping in a couple of weeks she is ready to flip back over on the redone trailer for topside work.

 

That is some serious work for a very nice finished product.

 

Got the second coat on today, looking better. I decided to do one coat a day with the cooler weather. Recoat on the totalboat product is 4 to 48 hours at 70 degrees. We are in a bit of a cool spot right now, so slowing down a bit. There are a few spots along the bottom center runner that did not get smoothed out. Missed the spreading of the bondo some and you can see it once it was primed. It is sealed up, so just cosmetic. I figure it will get some dings along the bottom anyways with the trailer or during use. At some point, you just have to say good enough and move on.

I only plan on doing this once, then I look at that nice straight sharp line on the transom and remember what it looked like when I started. And how rounded it probably was when new... Good enough!

Next week I should be able to sand the hull back out and put down a layer of urethane, looking forward to that!

 

You got the line right. It should be sharp with even a very slight hook, maybe 1/2 by 1/8. This has a MAJOR contribution when getting on plane. My I/O came with the small hook at the transom from the factory. It is important in seaplane floats as well.

Outboards don't seem to need the hook. When we converted my boat to an outboard they sanded the hook out. It gets on plane fine, but it is about 600 pounds lighter.

jim

 

There was no hook right at the end of the hull, nothing that small. There is a slight hook in the bottom though. Using a yard stick, I think the outside edge is straight going forward. As you move towards the keel, the hull developes a slight hook in that three feet. This is what I am used to seeing to help force the nose down. My 272 Formula is like this on the outside section of the hull. When I found the first side, I was a bit concerned. But upon measuring, both sides of the boat are the same. Again, this is going to be a putter and cruiser, so not concerned about performance. If I want to burn gas and make noise, that is what the 272 is for. I just want this to be solid and a safe ride.

If it needs that small of a hook to help it plane, the 1/2" long x 1/8" high, I will just add some small adjustable trim tabs to the hull. Need to get it running before I am concerned about that though.

I did cave on the few more noticeable defects along the keel. Mixed up a quick batch of bondo last night and touched them up, looks better now. No one would have ever known, but I would have. Put way more time into making the bottom pretty than I had planned to, but that is the way these things go.

Brian

 

Just put the third coat on the hull bottom after sanding the bondo down. Used about a 5' straight edge to check the bottom again. The outside edge of the hull by the rounded chines are pretty much flat. With one end of the straight edge on the transom line, as you move towards the keel a gap developes and is greatest close to the keel, probably in the 6-12 inches off centerline range. If you move the straight edge towards the bow of the boat, it eventually lies flat once the end is about 12" forward of the keel. As you pull it back towards the transom, the gap grows until it is about an 1/8" deep, maybe a bit more. This is the hook that I am referring. It is not a real sharp or small hook located right at the transom, more like the size of a larger trim tab. About 12" long and up to 18" wide until it blends into the hull.