18' Tracker Grizzly boat modification

[Ram]

Hey guys, I wanted to share with you the finished product of my jon boat modification to the 18' Tracker Grizzly that I bought. It turned out better than I had thought and I love it. It took a little longer than expected, but I wanted to do it right and didn't want to cut corners. If you can't remember what boat I'm talking about, here are the pictures that I posted before when I had questions about epoxy resins.

Before

The entire project was put on shareaproject.com, which has pictures and descriptions of everything. Just click on the link below and it should take you there, let me know what you all think of the finished project.

https://www.shareaproject.com/pages/projectThumbs,p,469,00.html

 

[Captain Ahab]

Looks nice:

Post up some end result photos so we do not have to leave this site to view please

 

[Jim]

Your boat came out really nice man! Good job! =D>

 

[Jim]

What are you going to do/have for an outboard?

 

[Zum]

nice job on the mod

 

[Ram]

We mostly fish trolling motor only lakes, but I just recently bought a used 20 hp Mariner for use on the limited horsepower lakes around here. I took it out this weekend and that 20 hp motor really moves this thing, I wasn't sure how well it would do, but it's awesome.

 

[seaarc]

=D> Nice clean job. I bet that 1860 is pretty stable when standing on the front deck. What are you doing for a live well I see you made a compartment for it but i did not see it lined with anything. We need more pics please like trolling motor mount and such. Again very nice conversion =D>

Dave

 

[Tyler_W]

Nice looking boat man! What did you use to water seal it?

 

[Ram]

I bought this livewell from Cabelas and it will fit inside there. I don't have it in yet because I need to figure out all the plumbing.

To seal the plywood decking, I used epoxy resin from US Composites (https://www.uscomposites.com/epoxy.html) and to seal the 2x4 bracing, I used Rustoleum Spar Urethane that I got at Lowe's.

 

[FishingBuds]

Yea, good job =D>

Do you plan on any other gadgets? lights and so forth?

 

[AndrewR]

That's an awesome looking boat.

How long did it take for you to do all that work?

 

[Ram]

I don't really plan on adding lights, I just have those clamp on ones you get at Cabela's or Bass Pro that run on batteries. The boat is pretty much perfect (once the livewell is complete) and will fit my fishing needs for years to come.

As far as how long it took me to complete it, let's just say it took a lot longer than I had expected. It really wasn't a hard project to do, but with being married, having an 18 month old son and a million things going on during the weekends, I pretty much only got an hour or two after work to do some things and most of that time was spent just getting my tools and supplies out. I never really was able to work on it for hours on end day after day. I pretty much wanted to make it comfortable for me to start taking my son fishing and I didn't want him tripping over those ribs on the bottom of the boat, or all the tackle that I would have laying around. Now it's nice and neat and everything will have it's place. I plan on buying some Rubbermaid containers to put my tackle in so that it's easy to get to in the new storage compartment, but I haven't got around to that yet.

One thing I learned from this project was no matter how big of a space I left for carpet - let's say around lids, or tight fitting areas - it wasn't enough. That freaking carpet caused so many headaches when trying to put it all back together, because holes weren't lining up right, lids weren't shutting, etc. I guess that's just something you have to deal with when building a boat from scratch.

 

[veilside180sx]

How tall are the sides on your 1860? I'm considering buying that same boat, but need to know that before I pull the trigger.

Thanks.

 

[dedawg1149]

great job