85 Diplomat **UPDATE**
Hey everyone,So to bring everybody up to speed from this last post. I had a few other updates floating around so I thought I would combine everything into one.
So it turned out that the transom seal was bad, so i had the engine pulled to replace it. Much to my dismay I found that the transom was rotted. So at that point i had to make the decision of scrapping the boat or going all in.......
After some research and multiple beers of course I determined to go all in. I found a fiberglass guy in White Bear Lake, brought it to him (minus an engine and out drive) and he proceeded to tear out the entire transom and replace it with Penske board and re-glass it from the inside. Everything went well. Then had to bring it back up to the mechanic to have it guts put back in it .
After Mike finished the transom we discussed options as far as tearing out all the flooring and replacing it with Penske. I know the front was spongy when I bought it. We also looked at fixing some exterior gouges and scratches which were going to require me to locate the original metalflake. So at the end of last season brought the boat back down to white bear and left it for the winter.
Fast forward to this Fourth of July weekend. Pick the boat up and it looks spectacular. New solid floors, spankin new carpet and buffed back to new. (We did have a minor issue with some gold Halos around the fiberglass repairs in the clearcoat which we are addressing).
Got the mate back up to the cabin, spent the day putting few coats of wax on her and a full detail, she looked brand new! The next day I dropped her ass in the lake, she fired right up. Since the boat had been basically disassembled to install the floors I proceeded to open the engine bay to see if everything was tip top. To my horror It looked like the water show at the Bellagio, had water gushing out of the starboard side of the engine. Pulled it back out drained it and found a frost plug in the bottom of the boat..... Turns out the guy that winterized it didn't complete the job because I have a cracked block. Needless to say there was no boating over Fourth of July.
First thing Monday I was on the phone to the marina that did the fiberglass work. He said don't worry about it it'll be taken care of. They are a big sail boat marina and do not do much on I/O's. As well as it turns out the person that did the winterizing was not their normal mechanic but an independent.
Fast forward to last Friday. So they sent me to a guy in Stillwater specializes in Repowering performance boats. And after a short discussion my new friend has a spankin new Vortex V6 on order from Mercury which will be taking me from stock 175 to 220hp
. And considering that engine was 30 years old, I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't putting out anything close to 175hp. Since I'm getting a new engine out of the deal, I asked my new friend to give me some suggestions on tweeking this one a bit. Right now we are just discussing lighter exhaust manifolds and risers. We will see what he comes back with. I need to save a few bucks for Kip over the winter and my new interior. At that point in time it'll be a fully restored a brand-new boat
. I'm even considering updating the logos, kind of a restomod.
Quite the adventure!
