1984 16' Bass Attacker Complete Rebuild

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Bigwrench

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Mar 30, 2014
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Location
Extreme Southwest Virginia
New guy to the Forums from SWVA/East Tn area . Have spent hours the last few days reading through some of the amazing posts on the site so thank you all in advance for a great resource !
I belong to a fishing website and after several recommendations to come here for info , I decided this is the place to ask questions about my project. Hopefully I can help someone else who is looking for guidance and learn a few things along the way. I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong section and Admin feel free to move it if so. Thank you
I got this 1984 Bass Attacker by Sea Nymph boat off of my neighbor by trading 5 oil changes on her SUV ! We had kicked around a price for a couple years and she decided that's what she wanted so it is now mine with very little initial investment. It has a 55 HP Nissan 2 Stroke that runs great ( more on that later). ImageUploadedByTapatalk1396353804.573103.jpg

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The boat had about 18" of water in it when I hooked it up to move it so found a steep hill and drained it , it was full of leaves and junk and all the wood was rotted and the foam was saturated.
My ideas are to strip it down to the aluminum check it for leaks and repair any issues that are present . Im not sure if I want to replace the floor with wood or aluminum yet . I would prefer Aluminum with some sort of Non Slip coating just for ease of cleaning it. The boat was seriously neglected by her teenage boys and is in need of some serious TLC.
I started out by removing all the floor decking and anything that had to be removed to get me to that point
 
Got everything off of it last night and I'm down to the metal floor and the foam
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I found rot in the transom wood so tonight the motor comes off and ill start working on removing that as well
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As well as removing all the water logged foam and getting it ready for a good cleaning and pressure washing inside. What do you guys recommend ? I've read aluma bright (acid) and saw on here someone used CLR ? I thought maybe purple power and let it soak in and then pressure wash it off but wanna do it right.
 
smackdaddy53 said:
Sandblast it! Gets in the cracks and crevices. Definitely the way to go if you have access or know somewhere to get it done.
That would be best , I'd bet it would look clean too maybe a media blast like walnut shells or some fine sand ? May have to buy a sand blaster now lol. Also wanted to ask you about your riveting tool the solid rivet one "Bucker?" I have several air hammers and might need to look into this. Also have a pneumatic riveter and a "Big Daddy" so I should be good on regular rivets. Looking for a local source for alum plate now. Thanks again , your post gave me a ton of ideas lol. Right now I want to get it stripped , get it clean and them come up with a plan
This will be my Muskie,Striper,Crappie and Walleye rig that I can troll or cast for bass or whatever either on the lake or the river. Also exclusively for 2 lakes with no gas rule at 3500+ feet elevation on top of mountains locally here that are impossible to get up to with the Ranger.
 
I took a cheapo air chisel from Harbor Freight Tools and cut the end off one of the chisels, drilled the end with a 1/2" drill bit, buffed it smooth and it has a perfect concave tip to fit solid rivets. I drilled a few indentations in a $7 log splitting wedge and used that for a bucking bar. Works perfect
 
smackdaddy53 said:
I took a cheapo air chisel from Harbor Freight Tools and cut the end off one of the chisels, drilled the end with a 1/2" drill bit, buffed it smooth and it has a perfect concave tip to fit solid rivets. I drilled a few indentations in a $7 log splitting wedge and used that for a bucking bar. Works perfect
That's awesome ! Gonna work on that tomorrow at work lol. I have about 30 different types of chisels and hammers and punches for my air hammers. Thank you yet again !
 
If you look through my build and see how well it worked for me, you'll understand why I'm a big fan of the Alumabrite. It's tremendously cheaper, unbelievably faster, and an order of magnitude easier than doing it with a sandblaster. Of course you can always ignore all of those facts and just go with the fact that it's a darn good excuse to go buy another tool. I mean what man in his right mind would turn down the opportunity to buy a new tool??? :lol: I am a tool nut after all. :mrgreen:
 
[url=https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=347132#p347132 said:
smackdaddy53 » 01 Apr 2014, 21:26[/url]"]I took a cheapo air chisel from Harbor Freight Tools and cut the end off one of the chisels, drilled the end with a 1/2" drill bit, buffed it smooth and it has a perfect concave tip to fit solid rivets. I drilled a few indentations in a $7 log splitting wedge and used that for a bucking bar. Works perfect

This sounds like an excellent way to tighten up rivets.
 
Time to update .
Removed all of the foam got the motor off and rotted out transom is history. ImageUploadedByTapatalk1400028583.626984.jpg
Down to a bare aluminum hull and I have a pressurized sand blasting tank and just have to acquire some media that will not be too harsh on the hull. ImageUploadedByTapatalk1400028659.938445.jpg
Getting pretty excited about the build as it is now in the cleanup, seal/paint stage and then I need to come up with a design.
Smackdaddy, I also used your advice and made a bucking tool for my air hammer. Thank you , I'm sure it will come in handy soon.
Id like to figure out a way to create my design on the computer so I can play around with storage placement and get an idea what I'm looking at. What programs do you guys suggest or use ?
 
Wow I just realized it's been over a year since I posted !!! Several life situations have happened and also I'm a big procrastinator with too many projects and irons in the fire lol but there has been some progress, So I'll try and update over the next couple days !
Adding pictures as time allows.
Here is what I have to work with
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Playing around with ideas
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The hull has been stored upside down in the yard .
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I decided to start working on the trailer first since this is where my skills are the strongest.
I stripped it down to just the frame, repaired some cracks where the slipper spring on one side has pushed through.
Installed some new wheels and tires
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and drove it to a local media blaster who took it down to bare metal and refinished it in an industrial black that supposedly will outlast the trailer lol.
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New wiring harness and lights
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He also welded in some supports and straps around the slipper springs to stop them from breaking through again.
Tonight I decided to just work on the outside of the hull so we covered the trailer with old blankets and placed the hull on the trailer frame , bottom side up . Since my play money has dwindled some due to a couple fishing trips this fall I'm just roughing up the outside with a wire brush . My plan is to brush the entire outside , acid wash it and then take it to work to our body shop for final sealing, prep, priming and painting in one of our booths to bake it on good and thick. The outside will be a desert type camo. I also have a portable pressurized blasting tank and a couple different types of media I'm playing around with
I'm still going to media blast the entire inside of the hull (professionally) when the budget allows , having him blast the inside and the outside just isn't in the budget right now. I will be going back with aluminum plate decking and lots of compartments and plenty of foam. Gonna be a long process but I'm determined to see it through if it takes 5 years lol.
 
It's easy to understand how projects sometimes get pushed aside. I myself have 2 projects sitting here. The one I hope to finish first is the Sea Nymph Pike Attacker that I picked up this summer for a song and was supposed to be a quick turnaround.

So far yours is looking promising.. I'll keep a watch out for your progress!
 
I uploaded some pictures of progress but somehow they got out of order. Most likely because I'm using tapatalk. I'll try to organize them on the computer today , I may have to try and upload them one at a time until I figure out the issue.
 
Bigwrench said:
I uploaded some pictures of progress but somehow they got out of order. Most likely because I'm using tapatalk. I'll try to organize them on the computer today , I may have to try and upload them one at a time until I figure out the issue.
If you upload your pics to one of the free hosting sites like photobucket/tinypic/etc then you can attach your pics with the img code in any order you like and there's no size restrictions when you do it that way.
 
Yea tapatalk can be a pain in the hind end sometimes. Can't wait to see more progress on this rig. Keep up the good work!
 
Brush.jpgOK gonna try on the pc here at work :- lol
I think the other ones are in order now
Last night we decided to strip the aluminum as I had said so we flipped the hull over onto the newly painted trailer , it puts it at the perfect height for working on the hull bottom and sides and is still moveable. I placed old blankets on the trailer to protect the finish while working.
Im using a very aggressive wire wheel I'm going to look for a less aggressive one , this one is so stiff it has a tendency to jump around and I feel a less aggressive brush would do what I need but give me better control

Just trying to remove the oxidation and get a rough surface for now
Aluminum strip.jpg
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Started removing the Old Stickers off the side with a sticker scraper
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I tried rebuilding the jack but it turned out to be more than I cared to deal with so its getting a new one
Jack before.jpg
another picture of the original slipper spring damage
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my temporary fix, I suck at welding lol
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My redneck Jack
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Redneck Alignment LOL
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Looks Good for now but will recheck when fully loaded
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Did some more hull stripping/roughing up today in between rain which is still going on at 12:45am!
Bought 4 more types of cone brush wheels to try out. Absolutely need to find some aluminum plate supplier close to home.
A few more pictures
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Here's another trailer photo I forgot to add above , (seems something has happened with the way photos upload with tapatalk since I was last here) not sure what the fix is to make sure they get in order that you want them posted but anyways I'll move em around on the PC at work when I get time if they seem out of place
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Here's the frame support he welded in and the slipper spring strap.
 
Coming along nicely.

Had a Spartan trailer that had slipper springs on it and it had a 1/8" steel pad welded on it that was about 3" long between the spring and the frame rail. Looked original to me.

Keep the pictures coming!
 
bonz_d said:
Coming along nicely.

Had a Spartan trailer that had slipper springs on it and it had a 1/8" steel pad welded on it that was about 3" long between the spring and the frame rail. Looked original to me.

Keep the pictures coming!
I had actually talked about a sacrificial plate going in there with a buddy of mine and it just completely slipped my mind when I dropped the trailer off and we were going over what I wanted.
I'm thinking now I could probably cut a couple of longer pieces and just bolt them in with a couple bolts .

Need to make a decision on sealing this hull up , there's a lot of rivets and some rubber type gasket materiel in between the riveted panels. Earlier in the year I put the plug in when we had some torrential rains and only had a couple drips coming from the front bow area where they seamed the center piece in.
I have the homemade Bucker tool that smackdaddy suggested and plan on hitting all those rivets in that area but also would like to somehow seal the outside and the inside before painting if possible for added protection.
Just not sure if I should use Gluvit, 5200 or whether to do both sides or just one side lol.
Lots of decisions to make I guess.
 

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