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Just purchased an 89 Viper. Drilled sample in core and found it wet as suspected on purchase. I on preparing for a complete recore this winter. After reading many recore threads here and on S & F one question still remains, what to do about flotation. Remove and let boat sink? Puget Sound can be hundreds of feet deep just off shore so probably no recovery. What is required to float a viper and motor? Is sealing off the bow section enough or do the side tanks need to be put back. Hopefully flotation will never be needed but...

Thanks
Bill

About 99% of the people never put the floatation foam boxes back in. They are not needed to make your boat float unless it sinks, which hopefully will never ever happen. Best part about removing them, you can use the new space for skis or other junk. Plus, in a Viper, there is core under that foam so you have to take all the foam out to get all of the core out. A few members here are running 200hp motors on their Vipers and seeing 90+mph speeds and have zero floatation foam in their boats. Just personal preference if you want to put it back in or not.

Welcome to the site. When you can, get some pictures up. Many of the guys here are happy to answer questions. Don't be afraid to ask. Usually there are more than one way to get things done, so don't be surprised if you get a couple different responses.
Bill

Thanks,
Shop is cleared, motor is off and fogged, building aux filtration for anticipated fiberglass dust. Once hull is stripped I need roll over and build cradle. Once I sell my 63 Nova I should have ample cash for entire project. Hard to spend much time now as weather in the Puget Sound now is so nice. So small steps until the rain starts.
This will be my first complete restore but I have a fair amount of experiance with wood and glass boats and epoxy.
I am still undecided on whether or not to remove the deck or not, the rub rail in the stern is quit beat up and have not found a repl. yet.

Bill

I replace the transom and never put the rub rail on the back when done. Also, I prefer the hassle of working on it without separating over getting it back together correctly when done. That's just me though. Bill

With the floor sealed up except for the drain in the back, Air will be trapped in case it capsizes. Now if you rip a hole in it, that chances things. I threw a dump truck inner tube
under the bow for the first several runs not knowing how it would do with a 2.5L 200.

Thanks,
Truck tube sounds very high tech. Viper is now on cradle and deck is off. I start on float boxes and floor tomorrow.
Bill

What a chunk of work.
The transom and floor were 95 percent solid. The core was a different story. Well over half of the core was wet. The new transom and stringers are in. I am following the origional design except for the addition of transom knees and splashwell to transom reinforcement.

Did the origional designers use the floatation boxes for hull structure? If so, what do you do to substitute? I could run core all the way up the sides. There is already a strip of thin foam core, 8" x 8 feet along the upper edge of the hull sides.
Any ideas?

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Transom and stringers are in? What about core? Most rebuilds I've experienced have the stringers on the core....

[ Post made via Android ]

I would agree that stringers over core is common. The glass box stringer on this hull did not have core under it. I am not wanting to change the original build, only rebuild and hopefully
Improve. Any thoughts on the float box removal?
Thanks

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