Hydrostreamforums.com - The only dedicated Hydrostream forum

My Dad and I are going to start restoring my 1974 Vector as the floor seems quite soft in places. We are going to start removing the carpet that was glued down and remove the bench seat and front seats to see how bad the rot might be. We took all the winter tarps off as we don't have a garage to store it in and we don't have an actual boat cover. Dad and I put a few tarps on the boat in the fall and straped it down with tie downs and we removed the prop and changed the lower gear oil in the engine which is a 140hp Evinrude. The engine is a two stroke so we ran the motor until it ran out of mixed gas (50:1 ratio). Then we sprayed fogging oil into the carbs as it died or ran out of gas. We greased the exposed parts and covered everything with a very thick garbage bag(with holes in the bottom for any water to drain) and all covered with tarps.

I have included some pics that show my project boat with it's winter covering being removed.

Thanks for your interest!

Cool I love watching other people work

In all honesty A thread like this is great in so many ways, we can bust on you if your progress slows and it's motivation to keep posting as many pictures as possible. You will have a detailed documented rebuild if you decide to sell in the future too.

Good luck!

Yep welcome to hte ithcy scratchy club .

Welcome to the Forum. Nice boat. You will enjoy the project and in the end, you will know everything about your boat. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. Bill

Hippie459MN wrote:

Hippie stop eatin popcorn and get yours done........................

Thanks everyone, it gives us confidence that if we run into any trouble we will have you guys to help us out!

Well, we started to tear up the floor by removing the carpet and then started to pry up the floor. I don't know if this is what we should have found but it's like a layer of fibreglass over some what you guys have referred to as balsa core and the rest seems to be mulch. The balsa core is like a 1/2 inch layer of 2x4's cut on thier end and spread out on the boat floor and the rest seems like garden mulch. Where we find the mulch part comes up really easily but the rest is fairly difficult to remove. We basically have to remove it by chiseling it away with a blunt edge and a hammer. Were not sure as to the thickness but were hoping we don't end up going through the bottom of the boat.
We have attached a lot of pics for you so please be patient. If you think we are doing something wrong or have any suggestions let us know. Thanks for being there!

We will post some more info/progress soon.

Thanks,
Bradley

Hey it does look like (possibly pine) 2 x 4's. Is it balsa?

Anyone seen anything like this with OEM?

RussF wrote:Hippie stop eatin popcorn and get yours done........................

Yeah yeah... Hopefully I will be getting to the floor in a few weeks. Had so much going on here at home I havent had much boat time or time for anything really for that matter. Work has been consuming me big time.

LSaupe wrote:Hey it does look like (possibly pine) 2 x 4's. Is it balsa?

Anyone seen anything like this with OEM?

That is not OEM at all. Looks like someone tried to repair the core using 2x4's it looked like. That sucks! Good thing you dug into it so you can fix it right.

Look at mine and you will see someone repaired my core with a single piece of 1/2" plywood that had tons of voids under it.. Its getting fixed right now though.

I know of another hydrostream redone like that, they didn't know where to get balsa from so they did it the hard and heavy way.

That pry bat you are using is my favorite demolition tool, it's got insight weight behind it Tj slide it on the hull then twist once under the core.

[ Post made via Android ]