75' Sanger SuperJet - remodel

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Rebuilding this thread boats almost water ready....... I'll try to recap some of the major items.

Back story... we had a 77' Charger MiniDay cruiser that went 55-60mph but we'd lost 3 engines in it and my wife wanted to go FASTER. So I told her to find the boat she liked and she fell in love with the Sanger SuperJets.

She's named this "Pixey Dust"

I picked this up late summer 2019 and just started the tear down for rebuild by April 2020 (now 2021.... a year late). Here's the progress and updates daily/weekly/monthly/yearly. It's had different motors and interior, when I got it there was an Olds 455 and junk interior (was told it had a BIG chevy at one time but the mounts didn't show that). Old's had two dead holes and my BBC had just spun the bottom end, so pulled and sold the OLDs rebuilding the BBC.

Day1 buy the boat and do one lake test, boat ran ok. Got up to 45mph but nothing really worked and the seats were horrible. We new the floor had rot in it when we bought it, so we planned to fix that.
Day2 compression test and pulling the Olds (came with extra over transom exhaust)

 

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Day 3 got it in the shop and stripped out interior, prepping for bow eye fix and floor removal. Lots of foam to remove to get to the bow eye.
 Foam and pump removal.

We did this for a couple of reasons;
1. typically with a boat this old the foam is full or water and or mold, so it's best to remove it
2. the bow eye is messed up and cannot be fixed properly with out some new backing and fiber glass on the inside.

I was thankful the foam was not water logged or moldy, got lucky.
Foam filled 4 55-gal bags due to shovel and hand size removal. Only 20lbs total, I really expected 40-80lbs

Also pulled the jet pump to get rebuilt.

 

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Day 4 Floor removal - NASTY

Someone added a cover-up sheet at some point which trapped the OG floor and foam in, so water could not get out. So it just soaked, rotted and molded.... This is kinda what I expected of the bow foam.

Besides my 30min "does it run and float" test day the boat hadn't been on the water in 3yrs. I was really surprised at how much water was trapped in there.

75% out so Day 5 is gonna be nasty with a grinder to get this all out.

The vibrator tool worked ok. I was scared to dig deep and go thru the main hull glass, but when I realized the floor was actually two floors I was able to get after it for the most part. The OG floor is way better glassed at the edges so I'll have to grind it off and try not to burn thru the main hull.

The OG hull glass looks perfect under all that crap when wiped out it's still sealed and clean, different epoxies I guess.

 

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Day 5 was as expected for the most part, nasty grinder action. Got it all out now need to DA it smooth and decide what to do about stringers. Gotta find some kiln dried wood and marine plywood.

Full on white out, had the fan blowing it out the shop door but that didn't help much.

 

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Day 6 was easy... load up the knocking engine and drop off at machine shop.
Rebuild should be a BBC 468 8.5:1 basic build up.

 

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Back at it after all the XMas and New Years trips (Glamis & Parker)
Day 7 - pull the trailer out from under the boat to get rebuilt, make dolly for the boat and prep for new stringers.

Going to sand blast the trailer and fix all the years of abuse, rust and old bits...
Only found one major item we didn't see when purchasing, there's a screw poking thru the bottom of the hull from whoever botched the previous floor repair.  Other wise the bottom is as expected with rock/sand rash from beaching. All that will get sanded down, glass added and re-gelled.

 

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Day 8 - stripped down the trailer and sent it to be sand blasted so we can cut grind and refit a few things, then send back for powder coating. Wasn't as rusty as I originally thought. The biggest issue was the float bar tube was completely rusted thru. The rest was just surface rust and normal ware for 40+yrs

 

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Day 9 - got the trailer back from blasting to fix, repair and update some items.
Blasting turned out OK, nothing crazy besides the 2" float bar beam which we knew was rotted out.
Made some inner fender liners, cut off the tongue, replaced the entire tongue and float bar with 3", added 1-1/2" down the center (just for extra supports, not really needed).
Raised and modded the bunk mounts 1-1/2" up, the jet intake was hitting the support bars WTF! this will also gain some fender clearance.

The trailer was four pieces (which I assume is typical for this type of trailer), well we welded it all together as one and added the center support for additional strength overall.

Next is to get new parts for all the axles and figure out paint. i was going to powder coat it but thinking of just epoxy paint due to some of the issues we found and how ugly the power will look in spots since we can't smooth it out without some bondo filler.

Also got new fuel tanks. Mine were 10gal 48" long, new used ones are 12gal 60" long. Had to repair some pin holes from previous rubbing.

 

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Day 10 - Wow I'm excited about some WOOD!

It's been a rough road finding the right wood for the stringers.

1st wood was Kiln dried doug fir. It's "dried" so the moisture is removed and the wood stays true. This is what everyone told me to buy... Well I get some about $60 two 2x6x16ft pieces. They are all outside in the weather and Bakersfield is morning dew and fog ridden during the winters. Sure enough I get the "dried" wood home and in my shop two days later it bends and twists, the exact thing it's not supposed to do.

2nd wood is LVL (laminated veneer lumber). This is like plywood beams for construction, it's supposed to be layered all the same direction which gives it it's strength and also stays true. Ordered this from Lowes $50 (I think they messed up), wood shows up and it's ugly... One side is great (down side) the other upside is grey and looks to be delaminating (surely sitting up to the sun). I ponder using this for a few weeks trying to find someone to plain it down to clear up the ugly. No dice. Most of the guys said the wood would ruin their plainer due to the glues. Also once planed no guarantee of a good side, could be holes and glue stained.

3rd wood and last try before just doing ti wrong... Went to another lumber yard and tried to ordered "straight grain/clear" kiln dried doug fir again. Told the guys I wanted like  AAA quality wood. They called around and found Hemlock Vertical grain Clear 2x6x12ft at $150. I was really nervous, but WOW this is exactly what I expected from the start of this journey.

Left LVL, Center Hemlock, Right Kiln Dried doug fir

 

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Day 11 - made decent progress

Trailer bunks and fender skirts all prepped for carpet.

Pulled the stringer box and grinded till I couldn't take any more... more to come then cut/shape/size up the new stringers.
Crazy this boat hasn't seen water since September 2019 and the rotten area's are still wet. I've had heaters and blowers in it for weeks back in December, crazy. This is why we go this far in restoration, if you don't the problem still exists and continues to spread.

Even got the Mrs. to help polish on the shiny bits.

 

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Day 12 - got a Place Diverter in trade, finished grinding out the old stringers and prepped the area for new & setup my stringer blocking 26" inside dimension.

 

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Day 13 - kinda frustrated. Since I'm not a wood craftsmen this is taking longer then expected to get the right results. I'm afraid to cut to much and ruin $150 in wood.
Got the stringers all cut and fitted to the "ends" (Dash bulkhead-front and Transom-rear). Wood is tight and sitting down in the corners, BUT there is a huge gap down the center 1/2-3/4" so I'm struggling to decide how to trim cut down the ends to get it all nice and tight around 1/8" gap max. The 4ft straight edge has less then a 1/8" gap no matter where I put it down the length but the 12ft stringers show 1/2-3/4" gap in the center.
Anyway here are the progress pics...

 

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Day 14 - Got the stringers all cut/trimmed and shaped to fit 1/8" or less gap. You can see we started with 3/4" to 1" of gap had to shape the stringer to the hull. Actually cut out more then a inch from the front bulkhead and 1/2" off the transom at varied slopes 2ft-3ft-4ft 1/4" at a time. Skill saw, sander, elect and hand planers all used to get there.

 

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Day 15 - finally done shaping the stringers time for glass work. So I'm calling this a 3/4 shallow stringer. 3/4 since it only goes to the front bulkhead at the dash (ie 3/4's of boat length) shallow since I cut it down to have a flat floor. Doing this gives me what "I" want and keeps the original 1/4 stringer look. It does add strength to the boat like a full stringer but not "as" strong since it's 3/4 and shallow.

 

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Day 16 - Stringers going in first lay down of glasswork! My buddie is an aviation mechanic/builder for experimental aircraft so he does a lot of fiberglass and carbon fiber work, so I asked him to help with this part. Made up some peanut butter paste (flocks - finely ground cotton fiber) to bond the wood to the floor and a couple of straps to hold it down for today. Tomorrow final glasswork then let it cure out.

We moved the boat from my house to the airport in his trailer on the dolly I built!

 

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Day 17 - Stringers are glassed in! My buddie really put in the effort today!

Really proud of the work we did here, it turned out so good!
Six layers of glass overall, with 9-12 layers at overlapping spots and where we wanted extra strength for the engine mounts.

 

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Day 18 - Great news we have a running engine again! Video from the machine shop during break in!

Wood floors getting built and prepped. Shame to cover those nice new stringers but I wanted a flat floor for ease of install/maintenance. I did cut some access holes in the front to allow me to run cables/wiring down the channels. I also plan to add access hatches for additional storage below the floor. I will not be putting back the foam under the floor. This is 5/8" birch plywood, putting resin on the bottom to seal the wood from water intrusion.

2021 hindsight this is the only thing I don't like that we did... the floor ended up to high.



View attachment IMG_7031.mov

 

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Day 19 - Floors were still wet with resin so we couldn't finish that, BUT!!!!! I did get my engine back from the machine shop! Anyone spy the GD flag?

My engine was toast NFG so we had to build "new"... Kinda wanted more

Pretty basic BBC 454 Gen IV
.30 bore KB202 pistons
Custom Cam 224/224 110LSA
750cfm QuickFuel Carb
Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake
MSD Billet dizzy, MSD 6AL, MSD HVC coil

 

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Day 20 - Floors going down. Peanut butter goop for glue down and weighted.