Xpress 1546D Makeover... -- SOLD!

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 28 May 2009, 15:07

Ok.. so I'm going to transfer this mod into a new one....

Turns out, this boat is a 1999 model Xpress Boat by Alumaweld. And I do believe this thing may be too heavy to pull with my truck - but by God I'm going to try. I didn't bring it home yet, but I do have pictures. I forgot to look at the placard in the boat, but I'm pretty sure it's a 1546D model, but the length across the gunwhales was more on this boat.

Total Length - 15' (well... 14'6", but I think they call it a 15')
Floor Width - 46"
Gunwhales - 68-69"
forgot to look at the depth, but it's nice. There is a carpeted floor in it, and even though it's marine plywood, I'm going to take it out because I swear it was holding a ton of water and that might be part of the problem why I couldn't lift the tongue.

I'm going to pick it up later this week and the first thing I'm going to do is take it straight to a car wash and get rid of the mildew and trash.

Here she is.....

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 28 May 2009, 15:09

here are my plans...

If you can think of anything that might make it better, please by all means give me your suggestions.

1 - extend the front deck back about 2'. I think that is a 42" deck, but I didn't measure and I'm going from looking at the photos. I want to put 1 battery on the left and right, then put a middle storage. I want to keep life jackets in that cubby hole under the front pedestal seat. I even thought about leaving that space open as a walk down and then extend the battery compartments down the side of the boat a little for my plano boxes with baits.

2 - scrap the rod box.

3 - extend the rear deck foward about 2' for storage and a place to put a livewell.

4 - the livewell.... I'm thinking I can get a big plastic box and make my own, or keep the cooler and just fix it so that it can still be removable.. BUT, I want to put a pump in the back to fill it up, a recirculation pump on the actual cooler, and then rig up a bilge to pump water out. I've got the plans in my head, I'm just scared to death to drill into the boat. Does anybody see any problems with putting the drain hole on the side of the boat? I've seen one other boat done this way at one of our tournaments, but I didn't look at it closely enough to see how he did it.

5 - batteries in the rear. I think I'm just going to deck over that space, but leave compartments on the side to store anchors, and any other nonsense.

6 - wiring... I think I should run all the wires under the flooring, but I'm wondering how well the boat will still drain. I could run the lines down the sides of the boat, and I'm actually thinking of putting 1/4" ply walls up and incorporating some type of storage.

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 28 May 2009, 15:12

Tyler (bassfisher6) and I finally trekked out to Athens to pick the boat up, we walked down the hill to check it out and see what just needed to be done. We immediately started taking out the screws holding the decking in place. I told Tyler to see if he could pick the tongue of the trailer and it was heavy. We spent about 30-45 min just trying to get all of the rusted deck screws, lag screws and everything else this guy could find to put the rod locker together. I cut back some of the carpet on the floor and saw the wood was wet - and I mean SATURATED THROUGH WET. We finally kicked the rod box apart and it took both of us to lift the floor out - a full 4x8 sheet of saturated marine plywood that weighed about 200lbs (no joke). I get on the lady's 4 wheeler and back it up to get a running start at that hill - no prob, it made it up without the added weight of the decks. We were going to leave the wood and stuff at the bottom of the hill (out of sight, out of mind) - BUT, the lady called me and asked what I did with it. Needless to say, we ended up going back down the stupid hill to get it out. Now it's in the woods behind my house... Tyler and I did stop and wash it on the way home... you'll see the clean boat pics in a bit

Now that I have the boat home!!!, here comes the pics. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do first so I looked at the inside of the boat and remembered I had just bought a 150qt marine cooler (BJs wholesale has them for $70, so Tiffany approved and I paid.. man this thing takes up some room... guess I'm going to have to put a small sheet of something underneath because it barely sits on top of the channels. I've got a size 24 battery that will run all the electronics in the boat, including the circulation pumps and all that jazz for this bad boy.

Then how much room it takes in and then what it looks like when it's out...

Then I looked up and remembered the shotty wiring... this guy took Liquid Nails and put the wire conduit against it and the side walls... needless to say a putty knife, flat head screwdriver and hammer were necessary.

Then I decided to go ahead and take off the trolling motor (which didn't work).. The #@#$@ owner used 3" lag screws (phillips head) to connect the top 2x6 to the bottom and then counter sunk lag bolts in the bottom piece to the deck. I ended up having to split the wood - I even found a nest of TINY ants in the middle of one of the pieces.

(here are the ants)

but then I remembered that I better take care of the trailer. So once I knocked off the mis-matched bearing buddies (non bearing buddy brand) I saw why the wheels had about 1/4" play in them - the castle nut needed to be tightened up another notch. But I went ahead and repacked the bearings since I took off the bearing buddies - MAN THAT STUFF WAS NASTY! Keep in mind this boat hasn't been moved since 2004. And before I could make the journey back home, I had to replace the wheels/tires. The other ones were dry rotted and had flat places, not to mention not holding air.

Then it was on to the trailer light issues... the casings were there, but like most of the openings on the trailer, they were inhabited by wasps. I took out 6 nests on the trailer (not including the nest in each of the rear lights). Anyways, new LED lights and new wiring. They did this trailer right... they welded nuts along the inside channel (out of sight and I forgot to get pics) to run the wiring through. Piece of cake!! and these Blazer LEDs are brighter than the LEDs I got at Wal-Mart for my last boat. I got these at AutoZone (military discount works at some of these places too if you keep it quiet)...

The right turn signal is on... that's why it looks like it's winking - these things pulse when the flashers are on - they're awesome

I don't like the plastic license plate frames that come with these lights, and for some reason I had a metal one laying around. Found a can of flat black spray paint and painted it up. While I was waiting for it to dry, I got to looking at the trailer... well, the tongue got painted black. And I was considering changing the coupler, but it's welded and paint makes it look brand new again. I think I'm going to use Herculiner on the trailer like Brine did. I've got a gallon a coworker gave me, but I'm going to wait and see how Brine likes it first..

Before

After

Well, it's rack time and I've been up since 6am. Fished for a little while this morning and caught one, but it's been sent to Jim, so I won't post it here... BUT, the sorry rascal finned me. I've never been finned by a spotted bass, but my pinky is swollen about twice the size (not any more) but if you look, there are 2 pin holes up top, well the one to the right actually went all the way through my finger and came out - that's what the slit is at the bottom.

Here's some cleaned up pics of her... still trying to come up with a color scheme - right now I'm thinking black paint with yellow lettering (even though another guy in my club did that, I'm going to see how his heat issues are this summer before I follow through.)... but then again, I may leave it like it is - I have no idea how I would be able to get this boat off and flipped over by myself

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 28 May 2009, 15:15

I did cut me a floor last night out of 15/32 exterior grade plywood... I just didn't get a chance to post the pics last night, but hopefully I'll get it done tonight.

I'm going to have to put me a temporary TM mount up front. I had some 2x10 laying around the house, so I'll use that for this weekends tourney, then I'll fab me something out of sheet aluminum. Anybody got any ideas how I can bend it without a break?

I also have to do some simple wiring for the batteries, but that's the easy part...

bassfisher6 · Post by **bassfisher6** » 28 May 2009, 16:15

cant wait to see Saturday what u have done with it

Post by **bassboy1** » 28 May 2009, 17:22

russ010 wrote:Anybody got any ideas how I can bend it without a break?

If you are using .063 or something in that range, you can bend it fairly well. Line up your bend line with the edge of a sturdy table (preferably steel), and clamp a piece of steel over the top with a pair of sturdy C-clamps. Now, work back and forth with a large rubber mallet, and bend it a little at a time.

There is a bunch of .063 aluminum over at the local scrapyard right now, and the current price is $1 a pound. I have got a metal bandsaw, so if you want to swing down here one day, you can use the bandsaw to make your cuts, if you have all the sheet pieces in mind.

Zum · Post by **Zum** » 28 May 2009, 20:47

Still can't get over that livewell,thats gotta weigh 300+ pounds when full?
I know it gets alot hotter there then here so maybe you need it there.
I wouldn't be able to catch the fish once there in there,I'd have to fish for them again:)
Sorry can't help you with your aluminum bending but I'm sure you will figure something out.

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 29 May 2009, 00:42

well... here it is 1230am and I"m just getting in from working on the boat.

Started out with the carpet. I made a run to a different Lowe's because they had remnants left over a few months ago.. but no luck. I got to looking at their carpets, and they actually had 1 marine carpet on the line. And this is NOT indoor/outdoor carpet. This one has twice the amount of rubber on the bottom, and it's actually plush carpet. It's gonna suck for hooks, but my feet are more important than hooks.

And here is how I get my clean corners without overlaps when doing carpeted edges

and..... voila!

\

I wanted the batteries to sit lower, so I cut out the dimensions of the battery so that they set down inside the deck... that's close to 2" so they won't be moving around.
These 2 motors will be wired 24volt to run the front trolling motor...

This is a 24 series deep cycle. I'm going to run all the electronics off of it (radio, livewell, BluewaterLEDs, fish finder, etc)..

I decided to see how hard it was going to be to do the wiring and be able to hide it... so I got down on my newly laid floor and looked inside the little cubby hole - HOLY CRAP - there was wasps nest, mice nests and a birds nest in there... along with some ground up plastic bags and an OLD fish stringer. I have no idea what this foam is in there.. looks like it was - well hell, I don't know what it looks like

Ok.. so then it was on to mounting the trolling motor. This is just a temporary fab job - so don't think this is how it's going to stay. I took 2 - 2x10s and laid them on top of each other. The bottom 2x I ran aluminum angle iron down the sides so that I could attach that piece to the boat. The top 2x was attached to the lower 2x with about 10 3" fine wood screws (remember, temporary). Then I put the TM mount on there and tried to figure out where I wanted it placed.

Then I mounted the motor on just to see what it would look like... I like it alot, but something gripes the crap outta me. When the motor is down, I know where I want the foot pedal and I wanted to build a tray to put it in - BUT, when I go to stow the motor, it pulls that foot pedal back and around. I guess I could put it further in the water, but I really don't think it needs to be any lower.

ben2go · Post by **ben2go** » 29 May 2009, 01:02

Russ,if my 2001 Ranger, with a 2.5 liter 4cylinder with 2 bent valves and a weak automatic trans,can pull a loaded Escort wagon on a dolly 220 miles through the mountains of KY,VA,TN,NC,and SC, then your truck can pull that boat.

Jr Branham · Post by **Jr Branham** » 29 May 2009, 01:27

Russ,
Nice find. That is going to make a nice one when finished. Good luck, BTW, shame on you for leaving that old wood at the lady's house

.....lol
Jr

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 29 May 2009, 08:32

I didn't leave it at her house... she called me as I was about to leave and asked what I had done with it. I tried to pawn it off that we couldn't make it up the hill with it - the she said "can't you use the 4wheeler?" - at that point I was stuck... so we grabbed that heavy sack of shot and carried it up the dang hill. We were both give out after that and I wasn't worth 2cents the rest of the day

Post by **Brine** » 29 May 2009, 08:52

Russ,

Nice Stalactites! You've got Rock City under that deck!

Tough to tell from the pics, but from what I have seen on other boats, that pedal well is normally postioned another foot aft. If you decide to put it where you have it in the pic, I would cut out a small area in the middle of the pedal well position to make sure that the hull doesn't interfere with it being that far forward. That way you have some flexibility in moving the well forward or aft if needed without making a cutout to big. I don't have the option of mounting mine that far forward, because the slope of the hull would prohibit the well from recessing flush with the deck. As far as getting it to sit still, have you moved the mount forward an inch, moved the pedal back an inch etc.....to find a happy medium?

On a sidenote, I was in Wallyworld the other day and saw a cake pan that sure looks like it would work for a pedal well for $14. I might have to play guinea pig with it if the measurements are close.

Thanks for posting the carpet seams, I wondered how to do that myself.

poolie · Post by **poolie** » 29 May 2009, 08:55

Dude... that is looking so good! The underside of the front deck looks like a cave with the stalagmites or is that stalactites hanging down

That's the carpet I have in my boat and it's oh so comfy.

russ010 · Post by **russ010** » 29 May 2009, 09:14

I guess I'll leave the mount for the TM where it is right now... but I'm going to bend some aluminum to mount the bracket on for the tm. I guess I'm going to have to move it forward some more - I have it forward about 2 inches past the bow line - I guess I can move it a few more and not have to worry about it.

The part about the carpet that I never was able to figure out was cutting the squares where the plywood is cut to fit down inside the ribs... but somehow I managed to get all of them covered up.

I wish my tournament wasn't this weekend... I really wanted to paint that plywood - but no way in HADES am I pulling that carpet back off to do it. I might paint the underside, but for now I'll keep taking it in and out until the boat tarp gets here

poolie · Post by **poolie** » 29 May 2009, 09:17

You fishing Lathem this weekend?