Starliner Pre-Season Polish - Input Appreciated

[Don's89 Senator]

Your doing a great job John. My Senator will be in your driveway by this weekend..

 

[atc250r]

Sure but you bring the beer and cleaning supplies.

 

[yellowfiero88]

Your'e gonna need sunglasses the shine will blind you in the sun.

I hope so.

It'll be like "bling, bling, yo"

 

[atc250r]

Gonna get some twenty-fo's for the trailer son!

 

[atc250r]

All the buffing is done except for the engine. The tint for the windows should be here tomorrow so my hope is to tint the glass tomorrow and assemble this weekend. Gotta decide if I want to get involved with painting the frames satin black or just give them a good cleaning up. I'm kind of running out of steam and want to get it together and go for a ride.

John

 

[atc250r]

Tinted the windows, installed them in the frames, replaced all the rivets holding the frames together this weekend, and installed them yesterday. Never fully removed the cover from the boat and didn't remove the boat from the carport so no point in taking pictures.

I polished the starboard bow rail with some Mother's Polish tonight (the stainless cleans up nicely) and started installing it but kind of hit a wall (both literally and figuratively) when it came to getting the nut on the screw that secures it in the very front. I was trying to avoid cutting up the wall in the bow area but at this point I can't figure out any way around it except for drilling pretty large holes in the deck and sinking a couple of anchors into it to send a stainless wood screw into. I tried wrapping a screw with teflon tape and with electrical tape as a temporary fix but was unsuccessful. The foam is dry and I'd rather not cut open the bow if I can avoid it. Any suggestions? I don't think I'm going to have any choice but to cut the wall open so I'd like to do it in a way that maybe I can put a door of some sort over the hole rather than remove the entire wall and reconstruct it. I'm going to start a thread looking for input on it as well.

 

[Rob B]

Fill the hole with marine-tex stuff dries hard as rock. Then drill a pilot hole and use a stainless screw to attach the front rail. I did this for my rubrail, had a hole that was stripped out.

http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=2088&familyName=Marine-Tex+Epoxy

 

[atc250r]

JB Weld crossed my mind but I forgot about MarineTex. I used it years ago to patch an exhaust manifold on an old I/O. My only concern would be if someone grabbed the rail to yank the boat up onto the beach or something and it ripped out. Gonna have to give it some serious thought.

John

 

[Rob B]

How about embedding a nylon ss nut in Marine Tex. Once it dries probably be hard to break the nut loose.

 

[atc250r]

I'd have to make a large enough hole for the nut then, no? I don't want to make a large hole in the deck, I think I'd rather try filling and drilling the hole or removing the wall instead. This is proving to be the trickiest part of the job. LOL.

 

[Rob B]

I would fill the hole and drill first, then as a last resort cut the wall if that fails.

 

[atc250r]

I've got plenty of JB Weld on hand already. Maybe I'll give that a go first.

 

[atc250r]

Went ahead and did it the "right" way. Cut a hole in the bow wall, pulled out 3 giant bags of foam, sopped up about 1/2 gallon of water, and ordered some gel to coat under there, carpet to re-cover the wall, and a slick looking hatch to fill the hole. Here's some pics from after all the hardware and stuff is back on and the polishing is all finished up.









If the parts all show up, the carpet and hatch should be in next weekend so aside from the gel up there it'll be all done. I can't wait to see if the foam removal lets it pick up any speed. I'd be happy if it gains even 1 mph.

 

[knarloid]

Looks great John.

Where did you order the gel from?
As we discussed yesterday, I want to get some for the minor hull damage on the Starliner.

 

[atc250r]

I was getting the hatch and carpet from Overton's anyway and I had a $10 off $100 coupon code from them so I went with a quart from them. If I have some left you're welcome to it but it'll be a couple of weeks before I'm at that stage.

 

[atc250r]

Just went back to this thread to answer a question for a guy on Scream and Fly and realized how sh1tty my gel looks now. Might have to do something stupid like try this again.

 

[Rob B]

John check this product out. The guys over on BBC use on their bass boats with excellent results. http://protecproducts.com/

 

[atc250r]

Might have to give that a try.