1987 ---17' 3" Alumacraft Bass V-Bottom---

[mechanicworkman]

Hey Everyone I have been watching this site for about a month now! And like everyone else I seem to have caught the BUG! This is my first build so hopefully I can get some help from some of you as there seems to be a wealth of knowledge on here.
So I started watching craigslist and came up with buying a 17’3” Alumacraft V-Bottom Bass boat for & trailer for 500 bucks. Brought it home yesterday all the wood inside was severely rotted. Could not stand a single place inside the entire boat that wasn’t supported by a seat!
The underside of the hull looks nice no dings/dents which I thought were great! Aside from the boat sitting for at least the last 8 yrs the buy said it seemed the aluminum side of things at a glance seemed to be ok!
Well so the work began! And work it was just tearing out the old wood! The “GOMER PYLE” that owned it used steel screws to install all the wood and they were to rusted to get out with either a screw driver or a bit driver on the drill. Since the wood was all rotted was able to rip most of it out! I was forced to break the heads of most of the screws off then I have started with the grinder to cut the rest off flush.
Here is a couple pictures of how it started. I will continue to post as I proceed with the build.

 

[mechanicworkman]

I have started taking out the seats! Now that have gotten most of the wood out as well! Ok next I plan on using the grinder with the pait remover thing to go over most of the boat I guss i am gonna go with the option to stip down the whole boat all the way to the bare alumimum. This is gonna take some time i am sure!

 

[ckr74]

Looks good so far. Keep us updated with pics. It's been almost a year since I started mine. Took a couple months and some $$$$$$$$$$.

 

[Zum]

Great start.
Nice hull to start with.

 

[mechanicworkman]

Anyone got the best ideas for this leaking part of boat? I was thinking aluminum welding it but not sure about the rubber gastket that looks like is in between it? Any thoughts? or HELP?

 

[mechanicworkman]

Here is the other area at the back!

 

[mechanicworkman]

I have debaited getting some of that STEELFLEX stuff from FASCO to coat the HULL with will that in and of itself do it or do i need to weld and then apply the apoxy stuff?

 

[bulldog]

Great boat and great start. I would recommend Steelflex the entire bottom of the boat. Other than being a pain to spread out, I have heard nothing but great things about Steelflex. I used a product called durafix to seal my leaky rivets and it is still holding very well. It is basically soldering the aluminum with a torch and these sticks of metal. Very easy to do and if you can bring the boat to my shop I would be more than happy to help in the evenings. You are close enough to me, I live in Manchester and work in Fenton, I'd be more than happy to give you enough of the Durafix to patch up your boat. PM me or reply to this if you are interested. I am not promising anything with the Durafix fixing your problems completely but I do believe it will help out a lot or possibly fix the leaking all together.

Good luck and let me know.

 

[mechanicworkman]

Gotta little side tracked working on the boat trailer! Had some issues but seem to got most of them worked out! Did get the trailer pretty much done it looks ok!

 

[mechanicworkman]

Finally got the seats out today had to do a combo of grinding off the head and then drilling out the solid rivets now need to find a welder to get the leaky spots welded hopefully i will hear back from the one guy above that said he may be able to help on the issue!Now that i got the trailer put back together will be able to cart the boat somewhere at least!

 

[J Hartman]

I heat up a the area of the boat with a propane torch and ram hot glue into any leaky problems... works well for me. especially on just leaky rivets. Or i've heard gluvit works well too on aluminum boats.

 

[ober51]

I heat up a the area of the boat with a propane torch and ram hot glue into any leaky problems... works well for me. especially on just leaky rivets. Or i've heard gluvit works well too on aluminum boats.

I'm not here to sell anything (that's in the for sale section :LOL2: ), but if you need Gluvit let me know. I was in West Marine today and it was $165!

 

[mechanicworkman]

Sorry guys to the people who have been watching this I work for 5 weeks at a time so i havnt gotten any work done on this in a while only a few more weeks at work and i will be back at home and can get some work done on this!