SPECTRALEN's 20 Rebuild

[SPECTRALEN]

Well, I bought this boat from a storage lot in Pontiac Mi. about 6 years ago and I'm really starting to knock out all of the glass work that takes so much time.
I can show some pics of how I got to here, but I've got some way to go.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

It's off to get a custom bent stainless rubrail.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Built a dolly so I can roll it back and fourth into the garage a little easier.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Did things a little out of order. I rebuilt the 460 about 2 years ago and can start it on a special stand I have.
Wasn't sure how that stand was going to hold, so I left the picker in place . Didn't even come close to flipping.
She's a runner. Mostly stock with aluminum intake and breakerless ignition.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Picked up some braided hose on craigslist cheap and made some clamp covers out of some old aluminum tent poles. A whole cheaper than AN fittings and looks better than just the hose clamps.

You can also see in the first pic the little engine pulls for a chain hook up that are bolted to the heads that I fabbed up. Nothing too trick, just makes it easier.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Cut out the old fiberglass fuel tanks. Picked up a pair of 20 gal. aluminums on ebay for $147.00 shipped. Had to raise them to fit them under the gunnels.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Cut the front bulhead and the floor out. Found about 3 gallons of water underneath.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Made up some jigs to hold in place the stringers. Did one at a time.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Rebuilt the swim step with a one piece of plywood. This thing weighs a ton.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Right now I have the engine stringers in, the fuel tank mounts in, the front bulkhead and center stringer with the side braces all in.

After I dial these floor supports in and make them pretty level, What can I use to adhere the plwood floor to the stringers? :hmmI'm going to matt the underside and mask off the strips that will make contact with the stringers so I get a good bond for the wood.

 

[DtB]

Quality work! Keep the pics coming

 

[Community]

I am not a pro but what you are doing looks real nice!

 

[75 Spectra V-Drive]

Very cool:thumbsup:thumbsup

 

[SPECTRALEN]

I am not a pro but what you are doing looks real nice!

I am by no meens a pro either, but the first pieces I did don't look anything like the later. Which meens I must be getting better.

 

[alohajeff]

It's bitchin' to see another Spectra being saved instead of scrapped!

Aloha

 

[TeamGreene]

Great thread! Nice to see another one restored. :thumbsup

 

[spectras only]

Spectralen, I did a similar job on my 76 20' , going full keel with cross frames, instead of box and center keel like yours. Your boat will be rock solid on any water.:thumbsup. I used Sikaflex 291 to bond the floor to the stringers and cross frames.

 

[74 spectra20 v-drive]

Lenny. looks great! I think you and I are tied for the longest rebuild on this site though... keep up the good work.

 

[Skee]

Hoping to start mine at the end of the season... :thumbsup

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Lenny. looks great! I think you and I are tied for the longest rebuild on this site though... keep up the good work.

Thanks Cliff. I've been pretty much useing all your advice and trying not to work on such a big area at a time. Hopefully the floor will be down within a week, then I'll be installing the engine to figure the mounts. Also want to get started on interior frames. I really like the interior in LIGHT THIS CANDLE. I want to try and clone the hatch and jump seats and have the buckets a little more of a rounded look.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Making a couple of shims to flatten these supports a little better. Glassing them in and making some patterns. I pretty much make patterns for everything, all my matt and cloth, and plywood. It takes a little longer sometimes but it makes for a better fit.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Used packging tape to put the 2 fiberboards together and get a good pattern. Also, the 23 grit discs like to wear out mostly on the edges. I take them and fold them and they have a nice handle to hand sand with.
They still need to be finish sanding so if the one near to the engine box looks tight, soon it won't be. I'm keeping about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch gap along the sides and tabbing with biaxle cloth about 8 inches wide, 4 inches each side.
The plywood is 19/32 BC and is very sturdy, even before the glass.:thumbsup

 

[BIGAMIST]

Nice Work! :thumbsup




.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

This bottom side to the front piece is taking about a 1/2 galloon of resin to wet out. I can't be sure but I have about 7 or 8 gallons in already. You got to wear a respirator for sure, even in the outdoors.
Another thing that helps me is saving these glass juice bottles. They make it alot easier for pouring and measuring. Also, I save any thicker plastic food containers like butter, sour cream, chip dip, etc.. They are sturdy and don't melt like the cheap cups I bought at the dollar store.
Had to run a 2 x 4 on the mat to keep the wind from taking it.

 

[74 spectra20 v-drive]

Hey lenny... try a 4" brush works great for wetting glass. I watch my buddy Mark do this at the shop and it's effortless...he swears by using the 4" brush and he is right, much easier. Have you looked at getting the resin in 5 gallon cans, usually about the cost of 4 singles gallons. I figured I share this with you once you are almost done

Also you can get away with just using cloth on the bottom of the floors, will last and uses less resin.

Your comment on the fumes and using a resporator made me laugh, when I was glassing the top deck back in and doing my bulk heads I didn't wear one and man was I hurting... I guess that means I don't work fast enough. I watched Mark over at B&K do the bottom front end of a Cracker Box last week, he layed it up in two sections 1 layer mat and cloth and finished in about the amount of time it takes me to do a patch, I must like smelling the stuff.

Looks good!!

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Hey lenny... try a 4" brush works great for wetting glass. I watch my buddy Mark do this at the shop and it's effortless...he swears by using the 4" brush and he is right, much easier. Have you looked at getting the resin in 5 gallon cans, usually about the cost of 4 singles gallons. I figured I share this with you once you are almost done

Also you can get away with just using cloth on the bottom of the floors, will last and uses less resin.

Your comment on the fumes and using a resporator made me laugh, when I was glassing the top deck back in and doing my bulk heads I didn't wear one and man was I hurting... I guess that means I don't work fast enough. I watched Mark over at B&K do the bottom front end of a Cracker Box last week, he layed it up in two sections 1 layer mat and cloth and finished in about the amount of time it takes me to do a patch, I must like smelling the stuff.

Looks good!!

I'm definately going to try those 4 in. brushes. Yeah, I was going to go with the 5 gallon but then I was going to make up all the wood and farm out all the glass over the winter, then I just started doing it myself and now I don't have a whole lot more to go.
I planned on using the matt on the bottom and a heavy cloth on the top. :hmm Is this not a good idea?

 

[74 spectra20 v-drive]

Looks like you have 3/4 or 1" floors, you should be plenty thick and this process is really just to seal them and keep from rotting away. The cloth helps keep the resin from cracking. Remember that the strength comes from the Mat, the cloth doesn't add strength. I used 6oz cloth and 2 oz matt for all construction, most of the time we used two layers of matt.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

The floors are 19/32 BC plywood, so just under 5/8. The span is no longer than 24 inches so they're pretty good.

I just found some more pics of the stringer build.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Couple more. I used biaxle on all the inside corners and wrapped over them with matt and biaxle.

The braces were glassed down with chopped matt. If there was any gaps, I filled with some thickened resin.
Also, doing all work in driveway, running a fan helps get rid of the fumes that would have been pushed back in the garage with the boat.

 

[specrocz]

Looking good so far. Did you make a floor support alongside the motor stringers? The design looks like a spine and ribs and should be very strong.:boobeyes:

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Thanks Bro.
I think I'm going to put in the floors that go next to the engine after the motor mounts are drilled. I'm going to have some small gaps between the stringers and the area of the floor where a wrench can hold the bolts for the mounts.

 

[RiverDave]

Can I ask why you didn't just run 4 stringers at that point?

Looks bitchen the way you have it!

RD

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Can I ask why you didn't just run 4 stringers at that point?

Looks bitchen the way you have it!

RD

This is my second 20 Spectra jet. I kind of like how you don't stand so tall in the boat with the floor being so low, but the problem with the low floor is that it's not level.:grumble:
I was going to run full length engine stringers and just cut them down to the right heighth forward of the engine box. Then I saw this guy online doing this set up and thought it looked pretty cool. Lot of work with pattern making.:grumble:
It might have been easier to do the full lenghth dealio instead? Oh well.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Got the floor all glued and screwed down. Had an issue with the gap on the front piece to the side of the hull. It looked too tight so I did some surgery and carefully removed some material.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Everything getting glassed gets a fresh grinding, sanding and vaccumn before wetting. I'm constantly walking all over stuff that may get resined so it seems like the right thing to do. Also, had to lay up some extra mat to fill in the low area of the stringer. The middle support and center stringer were a 1/8 to a 1/4 in. low so I wetted out 5 pieces of mat and let them set for a bit till they got firm and then wetted the higher areas, slapped her down real caregul and screwed in the predrilled holes that were mocked up earlier.

 

[vdcruiser]

Nice job, looks professional.:thumbsup

 

[SPECTRALEN]

The floor is down and I'm tabbing with an 8 in. wide biaxle mat/cloth, and topping that with a 20 oz. cloth that is 12 in. wide. I'm done with the left side and hoping to get the right side and then the center section of the floor this week .

 

[pumpndump]

wow!, super nice.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Thanks for all the compliments.

I got the main floor area all clothed and just need to put in the side pieces next to the engine, then I'll tie it all in. After all the interior glass is done, I'll go back and hit all the high spots with the grinder and put un a finish coat.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

I'm starting to clean up where the carpet is going to go and grinding makes so much dust and I don't want to take out material if i'm not going to be re-fiberglassing over that area, so I tried using a wire wheel on a drill to remove the old dried up glue and it worked pretty good.:thumbsup

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Drill baby drill.
Started out with the Alt. and exhaust still on just to see how she was looking, but that got old real fast and had to strip it down a bit.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Hope the angle is ok so there's no vibration.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Made some spacers for the rear mounts, which makes this system a 5 point mount. I wanted to keep this bellhousing but also wanted to secure the back end a little more.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Making the supports.

 

[SPECTRALEN]

pics

 

[SPECTRALEN]

Tossed the tanks in. They are next to be mounted.

Something about a BBF 7 ft. in the air, held by a harbor freight picker. Just saying.

 

[ka0tyk]

chop the ends of those snails off and open em up to 4".

 

[SPECTRALEN]

I am thinking about it. I bought a brand new set of the stock tips, 2 7/8 in. from Tom @ jet boat performance. If he would let me trade em up and do an upgrade for the difference in the price, I'd probably pull the trigger.

As far as modifying the transom holes, will the stud holes dissappear with the 4 in. cut out?

Anyone know of any performance to come from the snail cut with tip swap?

 

[ka0tyk]

I am thinking about it. I bought a brand new set of the stock tips, 2 7/8 in. from Tom @ jet boat performance. If he would let me trade em up and do an upgrade for the difference in the price, I'd probably pull the trigger.

As far as modifying the transom holes, will the stud holes dissappear with the 4 in. cut out?

Anyone know of any performance to come from the snail cut with tip swap?

when i chopped out my 3" trumpet tips for 4" transom rings with my exhaust it ended up cutting the mounting holes out.

 

[74 spectra20 v-drive]

Lenny, looks great but your motor is in back wards unless you are going to run a right hand drive gear box like a circle boat.. Oh I forgot it's a jet boat... Just kidding you, great job man looks like you are cranking it out man.