Project "Honor your Father" - Ultra quick boat project (I hope)

[FetchMeAPepsi]

The oil pump replacement wasn't too bad. I found it plugged in to two little round wires. I was worried I was going to have to cut it. That repair cost me $150 bucks.

Since this isn't a step by step style because I thought Ron would have a fit, I don't have a bunch of how-to pics. But here's some of the kids helping out.

First, The Boy playing Pilot. The little Blonde is now old enough to get outside and get into stuff (4) so she's got a sponge and she's soaping up the inside.



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Here's The Boy, The Powder Puff, and the Little Blonde soaping up and using the shop vac to suck out the random leaves, dead and dried up minnows, and whatnot from all the storage on this thing. You could hide an army in all the cubbys!



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Here's the seat problem. All the seats were like this.



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Here's the Powder Puff working on removing the seat backs. They only use two screws to hold them down. There's two hooks on the back that just slip on receivers.



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I took one of the seats down to an upholstery shop and they said, "No can do. You probably need new seats. It'll be $650.00". I said thanks and went straight to Wal-Mart. I bought some white thread for sewing blue jeans (tough stuff) and some thick needles. In two days I had them all repaired. They weren't even ripped, just the seams had popped. Total cost - About $4.00

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Of course my hands felt like they had arthritis for 4 days afterward, but it was worth it.

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[FetchMeAPepsi]

I had some oil pump and seat repair photos so here's a few of those. The seats had just popped the threads in the seams, like I mentioned earlier. To start, the Powder Puff took them off and I spent the $4.00 on thread and needles.

I took out 4 screws holding the bottom plate on.



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Then came the surprisingly long task of removing the staples. This took longer than the sewing. Like, an hour per seat! I used the booger picker to get them started up then if they didn't fly across the room I used a pair of pliers to get them the rest of the way out.



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From there I just peeled back the vinyl seat coverings carefully so as not to rip them.



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Then I got to sewing like a little old granny. La'dee dah. Put the radio on, Fred. I think Howdy Doodie is on.

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[FetchMeAPepsi]

Two days later I finished up the sewing and such then I stapled the vinyl back on. It looked great!



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Here's a random shot of a wire under the cowling that has apparently been bypassed. I never found out what it went to.



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These two wires behind the fuel pumps were both loose enough you could pull them out with a single finger. I re-did both of them.



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[FetchMeAPepsi]

The trolling motor battery connection was worn through too. Replaced that with the leftover connection I used on Cecilia

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The Little Blonde helped me remove the oil fill tube...



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So we could dig this little pump out. It's nestled inside a hole in the back of the fill tank by the outside wall. NOTHING holds it in there. I used huge 3ft long zip ties to put it back in there.



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While all this was going on our "sometimes" cat that visits in the evenings delivered a present, four actually.



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Kids got distracted by the kittens so I removed the lower unit myself. First I drained the oil, then took out the six big bolts.



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[FetchMeAPepsi]

Lower unit dropped, it's pretty heavy so if anyone does this have a lowering plan. The white plastic on the shaft there is the water pump.



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The water pump isn't like with cars. You can't just replace them. You have to buy the parts and rebuild them. It's good practice for learning how some water pumps work.

Inside there's a huge finned circle thingy made of tough rubber. Under that on mine was two spacers or something. No wonder the water pump didn't work!



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I'm waiting on parts for the water pump now.

While I waited I put the cord on the Skeeter battery charger. It was cut in half for some reason. It charges two batteries at once. Pretty nifty.




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That's all I've done yet. These parts came in the last two days. I'll be messing with the trailer bearings tomorrow then the water pump Monday or Tuesday if I get time.

The first picture is fancy greaseable hubs. You don't have to knock the cap off anymore, just pull out the rubber stopper, grease the zerk fittings, and off you go. Also in the first pic is the trim tab. It was missing from my boat.

The second pic is a zerk fitting set, the oil level gauge, and my mal-formed skeeter decals. They came in too short. With the zerk fittings, I'll put new ones in the trailer since they were both broken off and not working. I drilled them out starting with small drill bits then working my way up. They wouldn't come out by themselves.




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And that's it so far. The kids have named the new boat "Nemo" after the slightly gimpy fish on the cartoon. I think it fits, for now

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[bobdylan]

You will want to replace the water pump, that is considered a maintenance item. I could not tell from the photo. What brand engine. On Johnsone Evinrude motors, oil pump and fuel pump are all in one. Fuel part might work right and oil side not work, the cheap thing to do is do away with the oil injection and mix gas. Let me know if you have any questions, my neighbor is a boat mechanic.

[FetchMeAPepsi]

Originally Posted by bobdylan

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You will want to replace the water pump, that is considered a maintenance item. I could not tell from the photo. What brand engine. On Johnsone Evinrude motors, oil pump and fuel pump are all in one. Fuel part might work right and oil side not work, the cheap thing to do is do away with the oil injection and mix gas. Let me know if you have any questions, my neighbor is a boat mechanic.

That's good advice!

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I might mix gas anyway for safety. Seems like too many moving parts in there for things to be reliable. Maybe it's trustworthy, but it seems like 1 million points of failure.

The motor is a Yamaha 175. It has two fuel pumps on the side of the carbs and two injection tubes for oil on top of each set of carbs. It's a lot to get your head around when you first pop the cowling, I can tell you that haha!

[bobdylan]

Sorry. I missed the post where you were already replacing the water pump. My water pump was shot from running the boat up onto the sand, and running sand thru the pump.

[FetchMeAPepsi]

Originally Posted by bobdylan

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Sorry. I missed the post where you were already replacing the water pump. My water pump was shot from running the boat up onto the sand, and running sand thru the pump.

Haha, I bet that'll do it! All our lakes have sand so I'll need to watch out for that. Never driven a boat before so this entire thing will be a learning experience.

For the water pump, this D-Ray guy has it all figured out for me. I always forget about Youtube, but man there's just about anything you want on there anymore.

[FetchMeAPepsi]

Long story made short due to loss of pics

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Replaced water pump, wiring to the dash switches, plan to replace fuse box because it only works half the time at powering things unless you wiggle the wires. Suspect corrosion but can't see anything when I take it apart. He runs though...or well, he did. We've been fishing up a storm. Powder puff caught a 5 lb 4 oz blue cat on a spinnerbait of all things! Also been dropping lots of stuff overboard. My jump-box (200 bucks), a rod and reel I inhereted (130 bucks), a pair of sunglasses (30 bucks), My phone with all my pics ($200 bucks), and many little things. Didn't know what a klutz I was until this past two months.

And then things turned nasty this past weekend. We made two fun-trips around the lake before settling down in our fishing hole. About 20 minutes of good hard running at wide open throttle.

When we stopped we heard a horrible rattling noise coming from the engine and it just died. KAPUT! Opened the head to look at the pistons and this is what I found.



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I priced a new motor. $10,000! Yeah right! Second hand is still more than I gave for Cecilia. No way buddy. So today I pulled the powerhead. I'm about to learn how to do pistons. 4 1/2 hours of work and the powerhead is sitting on the ground in my garage.

Oh, and the Dad in this picture? He got to feeling better and true to his scottish nature became stubborn, went back to work and said he'd try to visit every few months.

I'm not mad, just sad about it. Good news is the Powderpuff, The Boy, and The Little Blonde are all making wonderful memories with me fishing, swimming, and flying down the lake on a tiny pad of water with the wind in our hair.

And now we'll have more memories as we rebuild the engine that pushed us for what? 3 months now? Life is an adventure I guess.