WELCOME TO RIVER DAVES PLACE

1980 Eliminator Sprint build

73mandella

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I'm starting a build thread for my father-in-law (Lou); he doesn't own a computer. You may have seen him when I posted a picture on the site of him skiing at age 85 (second photo). A brief history is that Lou start in the mid 50's when he and friends built a 14-foot ski boat with a 35hp pull-start Mercury. He said he thought he was living grand when he was able to afford 45hp electric start outboard.

Lou finally moved to an inboard flat bottom boat when he bought his 1963 Mandella (first photo). That boat was sold in the 1970's, but is still in the family today (Hot Boat of the Month). He was boatless until last year when he bought an Eliminator Sprint, which is the topic of the boat build. Like usual, the hull sat for about one year before we started working on it. I don't have any pictures of the boat on the trailer, but have a few when we flipped it over the other day to do some work on the bottom.

More to come.
 

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73mandella

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It wasn't too hot in Upland today, so we did some work on my father-in-law's Eliminator Sprint. The bow eye is loose, so it was a good time to fix that problem while the hull was upside-down. We cut a hole in the bulkhead, but will still have to use a very long extension to reach the bow eye. What was interesting was the floatation. Instead of spray foam or a foam block, we found a bag of packing peanuts. Didn't really expect that. We also decided to place a strip of fiberglass on the bulkhead to give it more strength. Next is some sanding on the bottom of the hull, so we can apply some gelcoat.
 

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Gelcoater

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The Sprint is one of my favorite models from the big E.

Looking forward to watching this thread.:thumbsup:thumbsup
 

73mandella

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Looks like the glasswork in the bulkhead turned out okay. We'll reinforce the bottom when we flip the boat. We'll concentrate on sanding on the bottom of the boat this Saturday. Someone who knows what they are doing (obviously not me) will them gelcoat the bottom.
 

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73mandella

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Although we're not always working on the hull, my father-in-law has been working on the boat for some time. The Berkley Jet was reworked by Warren, the same guy that worked on my son's jet, and has an A impeller and a pre-loader. Greg Shoemaker installed a Jetway and will provide the grate. My son is very envious, but there's just not enough room with his current seat configuration. It's going to have a droop snoot and jetovator, of course. All the jet parts have been polished and ceramic coated.
 

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73mandella

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Spent part of today working on my father-in-law's boat; this has become a every Saturday event. He's 87 years old and still has the desire to do some of the work himself. There were a few scrapes that needed some work and we filled them. We then taped off to where we're going to gelcoat. After that, we sanded the bottom of the hull and scraped some of the silicone off the transom. The last thing for the day was to remove the bow eye. We used a 4 foot extension, but it didn't help much because one of the nuts seized. We finally had to cut it off. All-in-all, we got a lot done.
 

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73mandella

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The bottom of the hull is finally sanded and my brother-in-law will gelcoat it next week. Progress is slow, but it's progress nonetheless.
 

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73mandella

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Step by step. My brother-in-law decided to apply the gelcoat himself 3 days ago instead of sending the hull out to have it done. He applied four layers with color and two layers of clear. We'll start sanding tomorrow if it's not too hot in Upland.
 

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73mandella

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Hats off to all of you who have skills and know what you're doing when it comes to working on boats. I can provide labor, but have no skills!

We started the sanding process today and had to make sure not to apply too much pressure and go through all the layers of gelcoat we applied. We used 220 wet sanding papers for the first round, but only managed to get a very small portion of the hull done. The hull isn't perfect and has some highs and lows, so we'll have to do some sanding with a smaller pad instead of the long 4x12 sanding pad. I did get some help sanding from two old guys; the guy in the brown shirt is my father-in-law and boat owner. This is definitely going to take some time.
 

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wzuber

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looking good 73, keep up the good work. Just for clarifications sake it has a B cut impeller and a place diverter not a jet o vator. With this pump build I was able to pace it along with the engine build/H.P. changes and make necessary adjustments to build specs to support the power increases etc. It should work very well with the stated H.P./rpm
 

73mandella

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Well, we finally gave up after hours of hand sanding the bottom and winding up with a gray, not black, finish. My brother-in-law found a professional and he did some power sanding and buffing a couple days ago. It came out beautiful, something we could never have done. The next step is to flip the hull and re-enforce the bottom. We're not even going to mess with this and have the professional handle it from the start. Once that's done, we can bring the boat home from my brother-in-law's shop and well do the rigging; this is something I kow we can handle.

More to come!
 
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Gelcoater

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View attachment 602608 View attachment 602609 View attachment 602610

Well, we finally gave up after hours of hand sanding the bottom and winding up with a gray, not black, finish. My brother-in-law found a professional and he did some power sanding and buffing a couple days ago. It came out beautiful, something we could never have done. The next step is to flip the hull and re-enforce the bottom. We're not even going to mess with this and have the professional handle it from the start. Once that's done, we can bring the boat home from my brother-in-law's shop and well do the rigging; this is something I kow we can handle.

More to come!
I'm curious if you tried to polish a section after sanding? While it looked gray?

Black always looks grayish when you sand it, until you put shine to it.
 

73mandella

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I'm curious if you tried to polish a section after sanding? While it looked gray?

Black always looks grayish when you sand it, until you put shine to it.

Yes, we did. We used 220 sand paper originally, followed by 600, and then 1000. We then used a rubbing compound and polish, but it never came out a highly polished black. The professional used a power sander to get out all the scratches left by the 220 paper and then moved up the scale of sandpaper above 1000 (don't know what he used).
 

73mandella

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This project is taking much longer than we anticipate; it seems that everything else has taken priority. However, we've finally polished the bottom of the hull, did some glass work in the interior, and it is now at Fiber Composites Inc. in Hemet for more interior work. We should get it back in a couple weeks and it will then go to my house for the rest of the work, except the upholstery which will be done at A1 Canvas in Upland.
 

74 spectra20 v-drive

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good luck with the project! Louie is one cool guy, enjoyed when I got to meet him and you over at B&K.
 
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