New toy!

[bLac K aBriOleT89]

Kammy,
Sorry about the job...but the boat is nifty!

[kamzcab86]

Thank you, Juan! Wait, Juan?!?!

Minor update.

Here's what the good side looks like, albeit the "Tahoe Sport" decals are a bit faded:

I got the new registration stickers a few weeks ago, so I removed the old ones off of the paneling, cleaned up the front part of the "logs" (love pontoon lingo!) and stuck the new stickers there.

And here's the interior (finally!):

The carpet that's below the seats is what used to be on the deck... until a previous owner took a trip to Home Depot.

I took a break from decal removal to straighten up and clean up the battery compartment under the rear seat.

Before:

A rat's nest of wires, dirt!, and batteries swimming in acid/water thanks to the previous owner overfilling them. The battery covers were filthy and just laying off to the side.

After:



Cleaned up the batteries (holy crap are those things heavy!) and all wire connections (hooray for corrosion!), coiled up excess wire, mounted the electric motor tilt transformer, painted the charger's mounting rails, etc. There was an inverter mounted where I put the tilt transformer (seen in the "before" picture). It was filthy and I didn't hold out much hope for it even working (it also didn't have any cables). I cleaned it up, lubed the switch and fan, borrowed cables from another inverter, connected it to a battery, flipped the switch... and it worked!

I read on a pontoon forum that Bondo was used to fix a panel dent; that's what I shall attempt, hopefully, this weekend to fix a previous owner's docking mishap (of course, I have to remove the vinyl repair goo the last owner used ):

I now have the light gray paint and may give that a go as well this weekend.

I simply cannot wait to get rid of that hideous Home Depot carpet!!

[sixsracing]

Instead of Bondo you may want to give Marine-Tex a go. Seemed to work better in just about every scenario we ever used it on. It's a marine quality product too. Spelling may be wrong, been awhile since I have seen a can or tube.

[tolusina]

Quite an excuse to buy new tools Kamz.
Juice that battery pack up to 48 volts, swap in a speed prop and GO!

[kamzcab86]

Instead of Bondo you may want to give Marine-Tex a go. Seemed to work better in just about every scenario we ever used it on. It's a marine quality product too. Spelling may be wrong, been awhile since I have seen a can or tube.

Well, I already bought the Bondo and it's just a couple of small things to repair. The panels aren't under water like on a regular speed/ski boat, so no worries. In fact, I Bondo'd the punctures seen in the pic above this past weekend; it was my first-ever attempt at "body repair" and I must say, it came out looking rather splendid! In fact, with the punctures sealed up, the small dent above and to the left of the punctures looked worse, so I had to repair it as well; did that this morning.

Turns out, the light gray paint I got was, well, too light; it looked great inside the house, but as soon as I took the fence panel out into the sun, it looked basically white. So, I gave the gray Krylon I got awhile back a try; not bad, it's just a tad too dark, but I can live with it... plus, it'll be easier to spray the rest of the panels out of a spray can, because there is no way the remaining fences are coming off the boat while it's in the water (stupid lock nuts!! ).

In order to remove that rear side panel/fence, I had to remove the rear seat arm rest/cupholder. The vinyl on the front of it was cracked to hell and looked awful with that vinyl repair goop. Since I'll be changing the color scheme whenever it gets re-upholstered, I thought "Why not re-cover the arm rests now? Looks simple enough." So, while the Bondo and paint were drying, I looked in my stash of leftover vinyl and found a sheet of navy blue just big enough to do all four of the arm rests. I removed the old vinyl, applied a sealant/protectant to the exposed wood on the bottom, left the original foam up on top (still in decent shape), and stapled on some new navy blue vinyl. Came out looking rather professional, if I do say so myself!

I forgot to bring my camera to work today; I'll post up pics tomorrow.

Quite an excuse to buy new tools Kamz.
Juice that battery pack up to 48 volts, swap in a speed prop and GO!

Ha! One new tool. No wait; I needed to buy a 1/4" socket in addition to that heat gun since this boat was made in the USA(!!), and all of my tools are metric! I'll juice the voltage up to 48 after my new career is under way. Marine deep-cycle batteries are not only incredibly heavy, they are incredibly expensive!

[Calimus]

Looking good! Speaking of new carreer, how's that looking for ya?

[kamzcab86]

Speaking of new carreer, how's that looking for ya?

I will be entering into a temporary retirement, as my aunt so eloquently put it, beginning May 27th. I'm going to take a couple of months "off" (need a breather, and go see some things I've never seen, like the Rockies) and then do the job-search thing, as well as return to school for a new degree/certificate.

Here are the promised pics...


The original (Valspar) light gray on the right, and the re-do with Krylon gray on the left, along with a preview of the new stripes and one recovered armrest/cup holder.

Here's a better view of the rear panel; while my Bondo job can be slightly seen (didn't sand quite enough), it's much better than what the panel looked like before!



One of the two front armrest/cup holders with the original vinyl:


...and with the new navy blue vinyl:


I'm going to do a test-run with my sewing machine; if the test works, I'm going to attempt to re-cover one seat. If that goes well, I'll do the entire reupholstery job myself!

[Calimus]

kammy, nice plan for your break. I'm thinking about a similair idea when my job ends next year.

And OMG, nice work on the boat. Have you thought about doing marine upholstry repair as a side biz. Very nice work.

[kamzcab86]

Hmmm, marine upholstery... Well, if the seats turn out decent, I might just be looking at my new calling! My test run went well; I was worried that creating the piping would be an issue, but it turns out, the only problem is that the gray vinyl is a heavier grade. If I can find a matching (softer) grade like the blue, I'm definitely going for the re-upholstery job. And now I'm toying with the idea of covering the seat frame wood with vinyl instead of matching carpet.

Anyway, final coat of clear was sprayed this past weekend (and in the process I discovered that the bees are back to living in my family room wall! ; they were professionally poisoned Saturday, and now they're gathering on the family room window screen and, apparently, this is normal behavior until they either croak or fly on to a new location ), and the new stripes were applied as well. Here is the panel/door all re-installed:





Now, if I can drag my lazy ass out of bed early in the morning (it's HOT here now ), I'll start painting the rest of the left side and rear (still need to remove the decals on the right side). The stripes may wait until the floor re-do 'cuz it was darn easy to do with that rear panel laying flat on the floor.

[kamzcab86]

Well, May and June were busy months. And let me just say that the management company for this HOA is run by a bunch of women who must sit and gossip all damn day!

Anyway, on with the project! (Not many pictures 'cuz, well, I didn't think to take pics during much of the process; just wanted to get it done!) Mid-may to mid-June: Stripped the remaining fence panels and color-coated them... on the boat! Re-upholstered the seats (done entirely by me!). Cleaned up the aluminum seat frames and installed new wood panels (covered them with vinyl rather than carpet). Cleaned up the bimini top (in good shape but filthy) and its frame and cover. Resprayed the bow rails where they had been damaged by previous owners.

Boat was pulled out of the water on a Friday, mid-June morning using the association's "community" trailer (as you can see, the trailer is for an 8-foot wide boat , but luckily mine fit on the vertical center supports... phew!) and stripped and power washed:


New wood was cut, coated, and installed (by Dad):


A section of the old wood:


The panels were clear-coated (what a PITA that was!) and striped. A thin red pin-stripe was added to the center blue stripe for a bit of pizazz (and it was collecting dust in my garage) and to match the red accent stripes in the seats. The helm was re-upholstered in a day by me while Dad laid down the Jasmine blue carpet. Mom helped out where she could.

The following Monday afternoon it was ready to return to the lake! That's a 72-hour strip-and-rebuild turnaround time!

And now, what you've all been waiting for, the final result:


How 'bout a before and after?
Before:


After:


After all that work, I decided it'd just be easier, better and more economical to just invest in a new boat cover. The cover that came with the boat covered only the "playpen" area, which meant either leaving the nice new carpet exposed to the hot sun, or making covers for the bow and stern sections of the floor. So, yeah, just easier to get a new one; it covers the entire boat, front to back and side to side. The center of the cover needed supporting (so that water doesn't pool in a downpour), so rather than spending about $75 on cover supports, I built one for about $10 out of PVC.

So, there you have it. A rebuilt 14-foot pontoon boat that cost a fraction of a new one (or paying someone to do all the rebuild work)! Since the re-upholstery went so well, I'm now pondering replacing the Cab's top myself.

[Briano1234]

yeah, right.......

Nice work on the boat.

[Calimus]

Very nice work. An don't let Brian bring ya down. He's just mad at me because I haven't shown up over at his place with a cabby top, a sixpack and envelope of bribe money

[Briano1234]

Very nice work. An don't let Brian bring ya down. He's just mad at me because I haven't shown up over at his place with a cabby top, a sixpack and envelope of bribe money

Sheeit. I lost a water pump on the Green one last night. So Last week while I didn't have any cars to work on, I decided to start the repaint on the kitchen.