Two five gallon kegs of homebrew.
One is my Flat Tire, the other Fauxberon. I'll surely have forgotten which is which by the trip.
I've got my 10 gallons of beer, I expect everyone else will want a similar quantity for themselves.
"There are times when sediment-free draft beer is an option of choice, particularly when you will be traveling into the wilderness for days with only draft homebrew to sustain the spirits."--Charlie Papazian, The Home Brewer's Companion
I've held off on posting pictures of it and such, because I've been waiting to get the new motor running. My dad's neighbor gave me this last fall, to get it out of a garage, and now I'm finally working at getting it ready.
The motor on it it is seized. I initially had ideas of breaking it free and making it run -- it's a two-stroke, how complex can it be? Those were abandoned when I found a crack in what I think is the water jacket. It would be a lot of work and replacing parts to drop 5 HP compared to the other motor. I also had ideas of moving the motor from the old boat over to here, since this one looks really nice, has a good windshield, no holes drilled in it, etc.
As you can see here, I got it running.
So back to the hull.
I've finally gotten all the leaves and such out of it... it was pretty scuzzy, and I should have made sure I had it covered over the winter... doh. A lot of scrubbing on it, and the deck is looking presentable... still more to be done, though, and some areas that I couldn't reach real well that still need to be done.
I think I'll wind up replacing the seats, I'll probably do back-to-back ones, like the other boat has. They aren't my favorite style, but they're fairly price effective on an old boat. I think I'll also scrub the deck entirely, maybe see about some kind of paint, and maybe even lay down some carpet. Probably build some side panel things to hold fishing poles and other junk, as well.
Over the weekend, it was time to finally swap the motor over. Saturday morning I disconnected all the wires, linkages, and hoses from the old motor, and got Kyle and Matt over. We were able to lift the old motor off without much trouble, all things considered.
The new motor, though, that's a bit heavier. Certainly feels heavier, anyway.
We quickly abandoned brute force lifting, Kyle had the excellent idea of a block and tackle. After a trip to home depot, and picking up a few pulleys, we had things together and were ready to test it:
It works awesome. If I had known before that, for $38 I could have this much fun in my garage... well...
So anyway, this made it a 10 minute thing to drop the motor on the transom. Now I just have to patch the holes from the old motor, add a couple more bolts, get the thing legal, and a bit of cleaning and polishing... it's in sight. It'll be ready by early or mid-june, I think.
Finish off a wonderful day of hard work, good food, good beer and good company with a great dinner with great company, all washed down with week-old wine... it doesn't get any better than that.
Back in February, I picked up this beast of an outboard motor. 1977 Mercury 85 HP, 850 cc, 2 stroke.
I've now replaced all of the electronics aside from the coils and spark plug wires (but including spark plugs, stator, trigger plate, rectifier, switch box (ignition), and wiring harness).
Well, after all of that, that switch box showed up today (finally). Put it on, left off the kill wire, in case there's something wrong in the wiring harness on the control (boat) side.
Cranked it with a spark tester in one of the wires... it fires. Hells yes.
Yup, terrible pictures off my cell phone... but they show what's needed.
There are two important things to see in these pictures.
1) Blue smoke coming off the prop. It's a 31-year old two-stroke, that's what it's supposed to do
2) Water coming out of the pee-hole up top, a nice fast stream. I don't have to change the water pump (think I'll still do the lower end lube, though).
Hot damn, she runs! She freaking runs!
I don't really expect anyone to play the sound file, it's recorded from my phone, really crappy, just thought I'd put it up there for the hell of it... but don't bother, it's just the sound of a boat motor out of the water (surprisingly quiet, I expected it to really scream on the driveway.)
It's running well enough, that I think the tuning can all be done on the water. Now time to get the boat legal. (posting of that comes later)
I freaking win. And fishing trip now has 30% more stupidity horsepower.
