Cagey
Member

A 1973 AlumaCraft F7
A friend of mine had this old boat laying in his backyard for a few years doing nothing with it and when I asked him about it he said I could have it. I learned the hard way why something free is not always a good idea. But, once I got into it I decided I was going to finish it no matter what.
This is my 3rd aluminum boat and I was ready to sell my other boat because apparently I was overpowering it with my Yamaha 25 outboard. That boat was a 1983 Sears GameFisher 14' jon boat with a squared off front and flat bottomed from front to rear. And when I would try and go full speed across a lake with any amount of chop, I could watch the bottom of the boat flex in and out and thought to myself one day that is just going to give way and I'll sink to the bottom. So I had been wanting to find myself a decent 14 foot all aluminum semi-V hull that would cut through the chop better.
So when my buddy said I could have the old boat and that he would scrounge up the title to it, I said what the heck. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My buddy told me that he had the transom repaired and all welded up and that he had a 40 hp outboard on and it handled well with no problems.
When I approached the old boat laying out in the yard next to the woods, I noticed it had about 8 inches of water and mud inside and plants growing out of it and vines all over it, but it was free. I laid it on its side and rinsed it down and it looked OK. No real damage to speak of. It had plenty of dents I could pound out, but for free, I couldn't beat it.
So I hauled the old boat home and slowly began working on her little by little- out in the backyard at first. Looking more closely at the bottom I discovered the boat covered in barnacles. My buddy had let it sit in salt water for a few weeks before hauling it out into the yard where I found it. So that was the first thing to clean up was the outside of the hull and take it all the way back to bare metal. And get rid of that cheap rustoleum ugly old camo paint job he put on it for duck hunting up north.
I'll post the overhaul photos in sections...
But first I would like to thank all those nameless posts I read here about all their overhauls and the valuable information I spent hours reading here that helped me along my way. It definitely made a difference for me and I sort of developed a few rules along the way like a rule I follow about not using any wood in the boat for one. Only plastic, aluminum, and stainless steel materials.
And so it began...

An old AlumaCraft catalog image showing the same boat as mine.

Eugene Erich Swenson, the AlumaCraft boat designer shown here in one of his custom one of a kind creations back in the 1940's or 1950's.

These guys don't look as happy in their F7 as I am in mine!