some cat rebuild, before and afters

[Noelm]

I have received lots of messages from people asking how the centre console cat is going, I am happy to say it is almost done, here is a couple of before and afters on some bits and pieces I have done, more to follow next week after I take some others on the weekend.

[Noelm]

here is one of the inside

[Noelm]

hang on, for some reason, the afters are not uploading, I will need to investigate for a minute
fixed it!

[frankgrimes]

Nice work Noel! Got any pics where you can see the whole console?(i.e. screen/stainless etc)

Mick

[Noelm]

not exactly what you asked, but close

[frankgrimes]

Looking really good mate - what did you end up powering her with?(And have you taken her for a spin yet?)

Mick

[Noelm]

ended up with 90HP Suzukies, took months to decide, I looked at every possible brand and 2 stroke (carby and dfi/hpdi) and 4 stroke, next best option was the 90HP Merc carby 2 strokes! I still have to construct some odds and ends to fit the steering ram at the back, should be in the water this Sunday or the next, motors are fitted and have been run, if you look closely at the console picture, you can see one switch is on and the tacho is at idle.

[Noelm]

I might add that I reckon it will take about 60 years to make up the difference in fuel costs over buy price for the 4 strokes over the carby 2 strokes!

[finding_time]

Yeh Noel it will take a while but think of the extra range you now have , and the resale will be better incase disaster strikes and you have to get rid of it!

[Ratman]

Looks good Noel, coming together now.

I like the lightweight 90 zukes as well.

Mick

[zakster]

Looks great Noel. The initial hurt with the four strokes is understandable, but if and when the time comes to sell your rig is going to attract some serious attention from genuine buyers.

[Vromme]

Looking good Noel,

did you do most of the work yourself? Once you pay for the motors youll soon forget about it. When you pay $ all the time for fuel it gets annoying and no doubt youll be kicking yourself (if you had 2x carby strokes) when fuel costs go back up again - no doubt it will!

Have you got it wet yet - if so how does it go?

[John Buoy]

Yeh Noel it will take a while but think of the extra range you now have , and the resale will be better incase disaster strikes and you have to get rid of it!
Too true and dont forget you will also be able to hear the phone ring and listen to the radio whilst underway
;D ;D
Looking good Noel thought you were up to somethin when
we hadn't seen ya on the boards that much..
Regards Frank ;)

[Noelm]

Looking good Noel,

did you do most of the work yourself? Once you pay for the motors youll soon forget about it. When you pay $ all the time for fuel it gets annoying and no doubt youll be kicking yourself (if you had 2x carby strokes) when fuel costs go back up again - no doubt it will!

Have you got it wet yet - if so how does it go?
Yep all work done at home, (except for a tricky bit on the front bulkheads) by myself and my hired helpers, that is, son and son in law (and my wife at times too) it should go in the water this Sunday or the next, depending on how I go with the steering setup, everything else is all but ready, trailer revamp starts then, some new gaurds, brakes and a general tidy up, it is in good condition as such, just the usual stuff that falls to bits with lack of use/maintenance.

[Noelm]

Just in case anyone is sort of interested, the materials I used (approx this is) for the floor and general fixing up, 4 sheets of 1.2 X 2.4 ply, 50KG resin (+ hardener) 5 litres of flow coat, a bag of stainless screws, 1,000 disposable paint brushes(not really, but it did seem like that) 5 disposable rollers, 1,000 cutting disks (once again, not really) 30M chopped strand mat (some 225GSM and 450GSM) 8KG talc, 2l of acetone for clean up ,add to that all the hardware and hatches, upholstery and new windscreen and you can see I did plenty of trips to the boat shop. Before anyone even thinks about starting a job like this, shop around for prices, to do it by getting your gear from (say) Bunnings will send you broke in a week!

[Noelm]

Some tips I learned the hard way, or when I was almost finished, start saving ice cream containers before you are ready to start, you will use heaps of them, look for a helper to mix batches of resin for you, so you can do jobs in one go, without jumping in and out of the boat, wear disposable gloves and disposable over alls, buy a cheap 5' grinder and be prepared for it to be scarificed, do not cut mat with scissors or a stanley knife, just sort of tear it, that way you end up with a sort of "furry" edge that will just disappear if it is over lapped, buy a good respirator of some sort, those cheap paper mask things are useless, the biggest tip of all, anywhere you are cutting glass or using resin will get sh!t all over it, regardless of how careful you are.

[Rhinoc]

Some tips I learned the hard way, or when I was almost finished, start saving ice cream containers before you are ready to start, you will use heaps of them, look for a helper to mix batches of resin for you, so you can do jobs in one go, without jumping in and out of the boat, wear disposable gloves and disposable over alls, buy a cheap 5' grinder and be prepared for it to be scarificed, do not cut mat with scissors or a stanley knife, just sort of tear it, that way you end up with a sort of "furry" edge that will just disappear if it is over lapped, buy a good respirator of some sort, those cheap paper mask things are useless, the biggest tip of all, anywhere you are cutting glass or using resin will get sh!t all over it, regardless of how careful you are.

Great tips,

In regards to the console what did you do? Did you fill the cut outs and just re-glass the entire thing? How did you get the finish as it appears really nice and glossy in the photos. I'm always trying to learn new tricks in the glassing. As you well know simple tips can save enormous amounts of time, cleanup, materials and essentially money.

Keep the photos coming - loving it so far. Makes me feel like finding a beat up glass boat to do up myself.

Rhino...

[Noelm]

all the holes were just filled with some ply cut to size, then glassed inside and a very thin layer of mat on the outside, it was sprayed in 2 pack white paint, took a long time and a pro spray painter/panel beater would do it in a few hours I would think, but for a home handyman it took about a week or so. As far as clean up goes, most of the stuff I used was throw away (far cheaper than acetone) and the ice cream containers are re-usable the next day, just give them a "twist" and the left overs just pop out, acetone was to clean ME and some other small odds and ends that got some drips or splash on them.

[Noelm]

Another thing I was told, and maybe some of the gurus here can dispute this, I was going to respray the deck, as it is a baby poop sort of coffee colour, but the guy that did the front bulkhead for me said that if you do it in 2 pack, anytime it gets bumped , as in a metal rod gimbal or banged into something, it will chip off, regardless of what primers and paint you use, so I took his word for it and I will leave it original, I also spoke to a spray painter and he more or less said, yes and no! on a car you hardly ever get things stabbed into the paint, but on a boat, maybe itwould chip off, so anyone know for sure? I did look at a hull that was sprayed, and all along the rollers and the keel at the front was all chipped off!

[murf]

the two pack paint will chip very easy and looks like shite real quick, the 5 Nova I am doing atm was painted 3 years ago and boat was left in storage so the paint has hardened up but every time you bump it with something hard it chips :(

I have to do the bottom so am interested in what to do there as well, I will do a run up the middle with carborundum as I drag it up beach all the time, can I paint a coloured flow coat on it?

have fun with the water test mate

cheers Murf

[Noelm]

you can certainly 'paint" it with flowcoat, but you will need to sand it and paint again, then sand and re-paint, it is near impossible to get a good finish with resin, maybe a real pro might, but it is quite thick and kind of stays as it is applied, it does not just smooth out brush strokes or spay "orange peel" on it's own, well that's my experience anyway, glad to hear (well sort off) that the 2 pack chips off, I was so close to spraying the deck, it might have made the whole thing turn to sh!t after a year or two.

[deckie]

Looking great Noel...if there's no hurry keep the quality going. Nothing worse than redoing stuff or hating yourself for not doing something properly and then becoming a massive pain in the arse job to do later. You waited a fair while to find her yeah ?
Not a fan of any paint unless done by a real pro...even then anything inside tends to chip or wear thru pretty bad i reckon. If u can speckle the flowcoat it really means u can afford the inevitable brush/roller flaws in any flowcoat finish. I guess the old fashioned way of redoing an already decent deck for the long haul is a layer or 2 of of light cloth to help w/proof and straight away flowcoat to get a chem bond...lasts and no wearing/chipping. The disposable everything is definitely the way to go...all u end up with trying to clean burshes in acetone is more brush marking from crappy brushes and go thru a heap of acetone which aint cheap. Big brushes are 2bux a pop at Nubbings and as u say the ice cream containers are reuseable...works out no more expensive and quicker. Being summer u dont get a lot of time to work so even better to have those premeasured batches ready to go and just add the catalyst...then leave the brush in them, grab a new one, mix, new brush and keep going.
Dash looks sweet 8-)

[Dean1]

Wow looking good mate youv really freshened her up! Youll love the motors, it will be interesting to see how she sits in the water etc. You can have your centre consoles tho ;D ;D Cheers.

[Noelm]

haha, yeah centre consoles are a bit of a mixed bag, I have always had a half/cuddy/cabin boat or runabout of sort sort, but this just suits my fishing these days, I will post a picture when I put it in the water ,I have a before picture with the old Evinrudes on, so there will be something to compare to.

[Noelm]

forgot the motor ones, sorry for the bad quality of the after, it is from a phone camera

[Noelm]

I got the steering all setup on the weekend, only a bit of wiring for the batteries and some other odds and ends and it's water test time! surprising how much "stuff" there is to do when a boat has been completely gutted.

[cormorant]

Bit too much toe out on the old motors but you know cat owners they always argue their set up is perfect;D

Now are you sure a cat is suitable for your waters as you know some chops tehy just won't work in:-[:-X

Lookig great. Cover those motors as no one steals old cats

Going to be interesting to see the performance and fuel consumption when the motors loosen up and any height adjustments are made as some of these modern hulls haven't improved much and that ull will ride very well.

I am not a paint person on boats where it can be avoided. I like flowcoat as it can always be cut and then polished. With the correct preparation and then the right person applying flowcoat you can get very good results. Unless you want a really pretty boat ( for a short time ) fish the hell out of it how it is and just smile when you see other blokes swearing at the ramp with every little blemish tehy see from sinkers or ramps. Some coats can be very brittle so you need to make sure any flex points are fixed and that is the one place where paints may be better.

[tropicrows]

It's always great to to see a project like this come together, trouble is if you decide sell her in the future no one will appreciate all the time and effort you have put in.

How long have you been working on the beast. I kept a log book of all my costs even the small purchases boy it sure adds up.................

[Noelm]

oh yeah, the costs of odds and ends you just sort of run out and buy would be huge, big purchases you remember (like motors), but stainless nuts and bolts, plastic inspection ports ,all sorts of hardware and small stuff soon adds up. The actual rebuild took ages to do, mainly because of bad weather, but after I had the console out, I could put it in the garage and do work anytime, it is kind of hard to believe but at one time, we had 7 sundays in a row when it rained! almost every other day of the week was nice, sunday rolls around and it pissed down, and of course that was when I had it outside.

[Noelm]

Cormorant, the old motors where just a tad toe out hey! mainly because the steering was shot, the old bit of rag you can see is the cable end, complete with a pair of vice grips rusted closed that had been there for nearly 5 years! where the previous owner was "gunna" fix it. I am a bit worried about the dreaded Shellharbour chop, boats just tip over and vanish here, and I am really glad I did not paint the deck, I will just live with the colour and be done with it. Fuel consumption will be interesting and I expect a fair bit of motor setup work, I have done quite a few now and know how a bit of work will make it perform so much better. I am concerned though about how it will sit in the water, I have now got heavier motors, the console is moved forward and the batteries will be in the console, so quite a bit of weight has been added and/or moved, fingers crossed!

[PADDLES]

that looks great noel, and would be a seriously good fishing platform. i was wondering what had happened to your rebuild after seeing your thread when you first bought the boat.

[Noelm]

Put the boat in yesterday afternoon for the first time, I can tell you I was somewhat nervous, not knowing how it would float with the new 4 strokes, so here is what I found after a couple of hours in some pretty sloppy conditions. The boat floats a bit less than 50mm lower at the stern (thats better than anticpated) motors start like a dream with the turn of the key( but they are new after all) I need to do a bit of fine tuning, the motors can come up maybe 2 holes, and some prop swapping maybe in order after that. These figuers are pretty rough as they are from a sad hand held GPS, but they will do untill the sounder/gps gets installed this weekend, 3 people on board, WOT was around 5,600 ish, so raising the motors will get that up a bit, speed was well over 40mph, cruise at 3,200 ish resulted in around 25mph, and the boat seemed really happy at that speed in the conditions, so after some fiddling about I reckon I will get around 6 -6,300 RPM (manufacturers max) fuel use was way/mega/unbelievable better than I hoped for, that is average 6lph per motor, not that lph is a big indication, but thats all I had and included some idle, some wot, and some mucking around,but that was going by garage bowser top up, so I will get real figures after I get everything all hooked up properly.

[Noelm]

the best thing about it being rough/sloppy was that I was the only boat out, so we had the whole ramp and Harbour to ourselves for fooling around, and no one to get all p!ssed off about me coming and going, and tieing up a bit, then going again, so all in all it was worth it, I will post a picture of the boat floating with the new motors.

[Noelm]

here we go, the batteries will be moved to the console, so that will lift the back a bit (I think)

[julian1]

perfect match for that hull those new DF90 Suzuki's. Looks to be floating pretty well especially as its a centre console and not a cuddy with weight forward. how was the ride of the old 560 Noel ? still impressive ?

[Dean1]

Looks to be sitting nice Noelm! Are you saying that both motors average 12 lph??? Sorry dont believe it for a minute :P 12lph per motor bare minimum would be more like it id say ;) Boats looking great tho its a credit to you. Deano.

[Noelm]

Looks to be sitting nice Noelm! Are you saying that both motors average 12 lph??? Sorry dont believe it for a minute :P 12lph per motor bare minimum would be more like it id say ;) Boats looking great tho its a credit to you. Deano.
Gees I'm a d!ck, I was typing that while I ws in a meeting and trying to look interested, and I used 12L per motor, but instead of doubling it for the two, I halved it, should never try to surf the net and work at the same time. So yes 12l per motor (approx)

[sandbankmagnet]

What a nice job you've done!

If you need some more weight up front, I wouldn't mind sitting up there.. :P

[Lovey80]

Well ne noelm, you waited long enough so now time to enjoy and put up some Sydney reports and lots of em.

[John Buoy]

Top set up noel , what was performance like on handling and dry/wet?
Regards frank

[Noelm]

The boat was as dry as you could ever hope for, being a centre console and a cat, they sort of ride a bit nose high, the chance of any water getting tossed around and onto the console position would be pretty remote (but I guess it will happen at some time) I must admit, the steering is a real dream, kind of hard to get used to a cat you can actually steer (I had cable steering before) lifted the motors 1 hole yesterday and will water test again this week, I think maybe two holes will be right though. If the heatwave goes away I will be fitting the sounder and some other odds and ends this week too.

[Flex]

Thats awesome Noel, you've done a great job.

AFter many trips in my mates 6.2KC centre console in all sorts of rough weather. The only time I've ever been wet is when it rains..lol.

Because you generally go quicker everywhere, you bypass any spray that gets thrown up before it can blow back in your face. I even did a trip up to Shoalwater from Yeppoon in a stiff 20knot wind. Not a single drop came aboard. Travelling next to use for a very short time was a 7m Haines, his windscreen was getting smashed by water.

ANyhow, let me know if you want to sell it:)