Hi All,
I purchased an '89 Tracker back in early October for what I thought was a good price (~$1400). It has an Tracker Evinrude 40HP (bad lower unit), Bow mount trolling motor, fish finder, new deep cycle battery for the trolling motor, Dual bank marine charger and a couple of new seats. The decking was replaced at the beginning of the year with marine grade plywood and some higher end carpeting from Cabelas.
I picked up a complete parts motor for $300 that I am going to remove the lower unit from. As a bonus, it came with an operational power tilt/trim unit that I'm going to swap out for the original manual hydraulic tilt assist.
I'm suspicious of some seriously waterlogged foam under the rear deck, and I want to get into it and replace what needs to be removed. The boat sits pretty heavy on the tires, which bulge out a little more than I think they should for the ~550lb weight of the boat plus 220 for the motor, plus accessories. The tire pressure on both sides is ~30 PSI with a max rating of 35. This, in addition to the fact that I can squeeze water out of the one piece of foam that I have access to leads me to believe that I'm carrying significant extra weight on board.
Tonight, I started pulling out the accessories in the bilge. I've already discovered some issues that the prior owner glossed over or didn't understand.
1st thing was taking out the VRO tank and pump. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather replace a spark plug here or there as needed instead of replacing a powerhead if the VRO fails. As I removed the oil line from the front of the motor, I noticed that the color of the fluid at the port was a very light blue color. Uh oh, that's water. I pumped the bulb a few times, and got pure water out of it. I got out my rag and pumped away. I probably pumped about 8 or 9 times before I saw any hint of oil. I never pumped enough to get the rest of the water out of the tank. Two things came to mind:
1) Thank god I decided to remove this now instead of some time next year. I wouldn't have had a motor to worry about then.
2) This probably explains why the P.O. was having problems with his motor. He couldn't keep it running (thankfully). I'm guessing that a 50:1 ratio of gas to water doesn't do very well for smooth idling.

I checked the compression before purchasing it and I got 110 PSI on both cylinders with a pretty ratty old gauge. Before realizing the state of the VRO, I did get it started and it ran pretty rough. After I got it started and put back away, I noticed that the little lever for the fuel bypass was in the wrong position. So, not only was the VRO pumping a gas/water mixture, the fuel bypass was open and flooding the engine. It was a wonder the motor started at all.
Knowing what I know now, I'm going to do another compression check to make sure that nothing is damaged or causing any serious issues. Can anyone shed some light on what else I should look for???
Continuing on, I pulled out the two seat boxes and found another disturbing issue. It appears that for all of the money the P.O. spent on good materials, he didn't really pay attention to doing the build the right way. When i flipped over the little cup holder between the two seats, I noticed a significant amount of mildew. The P.O. just took the marine plywood and applied the glue and carpet over the bare wood. [-X

So now I'm getting suspicious. I opened up the front compartment and felt under the bow casting deck. Yep, same thing. I'm thinking I've got two options:
a) leave it, let the water get to it and when it goes bad, replace it the right way. - Any estimates as to how long this might take??
b) attempt to tear off the carpeting that is there now, apply a proper resin coating to the wood and replace the carpet.
Neither option is particularly appealing. I'm thinking that if I go as far as tearing out the carpet, I'm not putting new carpet in its place. I never really understood why bass boats are carpeted. It holds moisture and fish stench and promotes rot. My thought is to do some sort of a textured paint over the resin coating. Maybe the epoxy coating I used on my garage floor??
Digging a little further, I found a spot where some critters had begun chewing through the wire loom near the controls. You can see in this picture that he managed to get through the PVC jacket on the power lead to the trolling motor. :shock:

(I'm sure he got a pretty good tingle in his teeth when he got that far). But the really surprising thing was that the P.O. didn't do anything about it. Makes me suspicious about all of his work completed.
I wasn't planning on this being an entire rebuild, but it appears that it is turning out to be one
I'm on a fairly limited budget, so I'm going to be re-using as much as I can.
Boat before any work done on it:





Some additional pictures of the tear down so far:





I purchased an '89 Tracker back in early October for what I thought was a good price (~$1400). It has an Tracker Evinrude 40HP (bad lower unit), Bow mount trolling motor, fish finder, new deep cycle battery for the trolling motor, Dual bank marine charger and a couple of new seats. The decking was replaced at the beginning of the year with marine grade plywood and some higher end carpeting from Cabelas.
I picked up a complete parts motor for $300 that I am going to remove the lower unit from. As a bonus, it came with an operational power tilt/trim unit that I'm going to swap out for the original manual hydraulic tilt assist.
I'm suspicious of some seriously waterlogged foam under the rear deck, and I want to get into it and replace what needs to be removed. The boat sits pretty heavy on the tires, which bulge out a little more than I think they should for the ~550lb weight of the boat plus 220 for the motor, plus accessories. The tire pressure on both sides is ~30 PSI with a max rating of 35. This, in addition to the fact that I can squeeze water out of the one piece of foam that I have access to leads me to believe that I'm carrying significant extra weight on board.
Tonight, I started pulling out the accessories in the bilge. I've already discovered some issues that the prior owner glossed over or didn't understand.
1st thing was taking out the VRO tank and pump. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather replace a spark plug here or there as needed instead of replacing a powerhead if the VRO fails. As I removed the oil line from the front of the motor, I noticed that the color of the fluid at the port was a very light blue color. Uh oh, that's water. I pumped the bulb a few times, and got pure water out of it. I got out my rag and pumped away. I probably pumped about 8 or 9 times before I saw any hint of oil. I never pumped enough to get the rest of the water out of the tank. Two things came to mind:
1) Thank god I decided to remove this now instead of some time next year. I wouldn't have had a motor to worry about then.
2) This probably explains why the P.O. was having problems with his motor. He couldn't keep it running (thankfully). I'm guessing that a 50:1 ratio of gas to water doesn't do very well for smooth idling.

I checked the compression before purchasing it and I got 110 PSI on both cylinders with a pretty ratty old gauge. Before realizing the state of the VRO, I did get it started and it ran pretty rough. After I got it started and put back away, I noticed that the little lever for the fuel bypass was in the wrong position. So, not only was the VRO pumping a gas/water mixture, the fuel bypass was open and flooding the engine. It was a wonder the motor started at all.
Knowing what I know now, I'm going to do another compression check to make sure that nothing is damaged or causing any serious issues. Can anyone shed some light on what else I should look for???
Continuing on, I pulled out the two seat boxes and found another disturbing issue. It appears that for all of the money the P.O. spent on good materials, he didn't really pay attention to doing the build the right way. When i flipped over the little cup holder between the two seats, I noticed a significant amount of mildew. The P.O. just took the marine plywood and applied the glue and carpet over the bare wood. [-X

So now I'm getting suspicious. I opened up the front compartment and felt under the bow casting deck. Yep, same thing. I'm thinking I've got two options:
a) leave it, let the water get to it and when it goes bad, replace it the right way. - Any estimates as to how long this might take??
b) attempt to tear off the carpeting that is there now, apply a proper resin coating to the wood and replace the carpet.
Neither option is particularly appealing. I'm thinking that if I go as far as tearing out the carpet, I'm not putting new carpet in its place. I never really understood why bass boats are carpeted. It holds moisture and fish stench and promotes rot. My thought is to do some sort of a textured paint over the resin coating. Maybe the epoxy coating I used on my garage floor??
Digging a little further, I found a spot where some critters had begun chewing through the wire loom near the controls. You can see in this picture that he managed to get through the PVC jacket on the power lead to the trolling motor. :shock:

(I'm sure he got a pretty good tingle in his teeth when he got that far). But the really surprising thing was that the P.O. didn't do anything about it. Makes me suspicious about all of his work completed.
I wasn't planning on this being an entire rebuild, but it appears that it is turning out to be one
Boat before any work done on it:





Some additional pictures of the tear down so far:




