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2001 Advantage 27 Victory

ToMorrow44

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Well, since others are doing it, I figured I’d chronicle some of the upgrades I’m doing to my boat over the years. After unsuccessfully upgrading to a bigger boat in the offseason, I figured I’d dump a little money in the Advantage and keep making it nicer.

Anyway, my dad had this boat built at the end of 2000, it was delivered in 2001. Originally built with a Teague 620, now it has a Teague 825efi. I bought it from my dad about 5 years ago and have been updating/upgrading things little by little. He hardly used it when I went off to college, so when I bought it, I think the motor/drive had 20 hours on it. It’s been garage kept it’s whole life and the only people to ever work on it are my Dad, myself, and Teague.

Even though we’ve taken hundreds of pictures over the years (a lot on film lol) after several military moves, who knows where the hell they are. I stumbled across these recently, some of the first pictures of it. I think I would have been 14 when this picture was taken:
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This I believe was the maiden voyage in April 01. Still one of the best pictures at WOT we’ve ever had.
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The boat is actually mostly original, 2001 era. Interior is all original except the seat bottoms which have been redone a few times as they take some abuse getting in/out of the boat. Snap in carpet is original too, although that could use replacement. I have a 2 & 4 year old, so I’m not yet jumping to spend $10k to update the interior so they can spill applesauce and Cheetos on it lol.
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Speaking of my kids, this boat has always been a family truckster. Still ski, tube, and wakeboard behind it. Kids have been going since they were 6 weeks old and they LOVE it. They love to drive even though neither of them can actually see, and really all they do it make it harder for me to steer but whatever.
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Over the last few years I’ve gone thru and cleaned up some stuff. In 2018 I stripped off almost all the powdercoated parts and had them redone along with all new polished hardware.
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Although I’ve only had 2 MSD boxes die over the last 15 years, when the last one died, I figured it was time to do something different. Upgraded to a Daytona Instruments CD-1 which are supposed to be built much better than the MSD boxes. First line in the instruction manual “do not mount on the motor” so I used a bracket made to go on the motor and bolted it to the firewall. Another theory is that the MSD boxes die to to power fluctuations, they’re very voltage sensitive so any spikes or low power from a not-so-great battery will harm them. So I used one of their capacitors in-line with the power leads to smooth that out. If you have problems with MSD boxes dying, try putting a capacitor in there, a lot of people believe that MSD should include the capacitor with the box, I tend to agree. I still carry a spare MSD box in the boat just in case.
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Speaking of the above picture ☝🏻, see the notch in The firewall in front of the motor? That was an option from Advantage for boats with a blower motor so the blower pulley would clear. My dad had it built that way even though it didn’t originally have a blower motor...how fortuitous.
 

ToMorrow44

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So onto this years project. I wanted to update the cockpit a bit. Here’s the before, 2001 everything. Nothing wrong with any of it, gauges arent faded, foggy, and they all work 100%. But I can’t leave well enough alone, so here we go.
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I wanted to redesign the dash so I could flush mount the GPS so it doesn’t look like an afterthought. Decided to make it out of 1/8 aluminum. The dash has a very slight curve to it, and the 1/8” aluminum is just malleable enough to contour it, while still being strong enough to hold everything.
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First step was to transfer the outline to paper so I could translate the curved shape to flat metal.
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A lot of time, a compass and a Weams plotter, I got all the design laid out the way I wanted. Then off to my poor mans mill to cut out all the holes.
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Lots of time sanding and prepping, all ready for powdercoat.
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My powdercoater was able to match the blue nearly perfect to the rest of the blue already on the boat. This is Candy Blue
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All the gauges installed and ready to go...almost
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With the slight curve, there was a gap behind the GPS. A little HVAC foam tape I had laying around fills that gap nicely
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After mocking it up for install, I find out that the Livorsi tach now is SIGNIFICANTLY deeper than the Livorsi tach I took out and was hitting the bulkhead behind the dash, with 1” still sticking out. A call to Livorsi to ask if they can cut down the case to fit was a big fat no, they said it would have to be done on the outside with a bezel/spacer. So I find a CNC machine shop near me and one of their guys does small side jobs just like this. So overnight he whipped up this little piece of machining porn here out of stainless
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Also upgraded the throttles to the newer style Livorsi billet and powdercoated the indicator bezel from white to blue
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One of the things I wanted to get rid of was this old school Autometer warning light and cutoff switch. The new warning light is an LED in the dash from Teague. Since the tab controls were on the old throttles, I needed a switch panel for the tabs, so that was a perfect place to mount tab switch from Eddie Marine
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Lastly was the steering wheel that I impulse bought a Teague last time I was there. I figured mine is a 6 bolt, this new one is a 6 bolt, should bolt right on. Wrong. Slightly different bolt patterns. Luckily I have Hardin Marine down the road for me who had this nice stainless piece in stock with both bolt patterns.
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Unfortunately that’s not where that ends. The new helm adapter was slightly shorter than the old, and the steering shaft stuck out thru the hole in the wheel and the IMCO button wouldn’t fit. So I had to cut off 1/4” off that shaft and machine out the hub so that the nut sat low enough inside the hub. The holes in the steering wheel had to be enlarged along with the countersink for the 1/4-20 bolts, and the center bore was not round so I had to grind that out into a circle for the IMCO button.

Final product came out pretty good if I may say. I’m gonna pull it back out, polish the tach bezel and get polished stainless bezels for all the other gauges so it doesn’t look so odd. That’s coming in the next few weeks.
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I ordered everything through Teague and had them build the gauges with blue backlights
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ToMorrow44

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Ok so this must be a Florida-only problem right? After getting the boat out of storage, ran it on the hose then found this lizard in the sea strainer haha. I guess the sea strainer is doing its job. I think the lizard was hiding inside the hose and got sucked in which is pretty impressive going thru the low water pickup on the IMCO lower and all the way thru the drive...
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ToMorrow44

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One of my pet peeves on my trailer was the coupler they used. This is how all the east coast guys do it, weld/bolt one of these Titan couplers to the top of the frame and call it good. To me, looks like shit. (Sorry forgot your take a picture before I cut it off)
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Moreover, the issue was how long it was. This is a Fulton swing away kit for 3x5” frames, rated at 9,000lbs....depending on length. Check out this chart below. My length was 38” from the ball mount to the swing. Which would put it about 625lbs tongue weight. My boat and trailer are probably 7,200-7,500 and has decent tongue weight (I haven’t measured it but it’s at least 10%). So I’m probably pushing the factor of safety of this thing
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Additionally, the ball mount was so high (even after I installed that drop slide) that my adjustable hitch on the truck is almost at its highest point and it’s hard to get the boat level. Also I hit my knees/feet trying to step over it.

So out with the old. A saw all made pretty quick work of most of it. Then a lot of grinding to make sure it was all square.
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Now thisis pretty cool. Picked up this Motiv pressure bleeder and they make this attachment for surge brakes. Pump up pressure then you can go open the bleeders, all one person. Pretty handy, available on Amazon.
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Finally got the brakes bled and ended up having to rebuild all 6 hubs from water intrusion. Also it was pouring Here in Florida from some of the outer bands of Cristobal.
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Finally done except I still gotta touch up some of the paint. The whole trailer will probably get blasted/repainted at the end of this season. One note: seems obvious, but I moved the safety chains to behind the swing away. The original setup had then right underneath the coupler, which does no good if the swing hinge breaks. The original builders of this trailer weren’t so smart...
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The length from the ball to the pivot is now 24”, down from 38” = much less lever arm stress on that . Overall length of the trailer decreased 19” too which is nice. Also this swing away uses grade 8 bolts unlike the grade 5 of the Fulton kit.

All parts came from Shadow Trailers in SoCal, great people to work with
 

Warlock1

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Safety chains were added to trailers as a back up if the trailer comes off of the ball or the coupler fails. Having the chains so far back looks like the coupler would actually dig into the surface if the connection fails.
Everything else is impeccable, great job on the whole project.
 

ToMorrow44

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Safety chains were added to trailers as a back up if the trailer comes off of the ball or the coupler fails. Having the chains so far back looks like the coupler would actually dig into the surface if the connection fails.
Everything else is impeccable, great job on the whole project.
Agreed, I think the swing hinge failing is more likely than the coupler popping off the ball. If you look at all of Adrenaline and Extremes builds, they put them behind the hinge too.
Thanks for the kind words!
 

Warlock1

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I would never have thought about the swing hinge failing. I just assumed the engineers would have factored all of the stresses in with a bit of a safety margin. Great catch on the length vs weight. I think the mods you did were spot on and decreases the stresses greatly. Please continue to show the upgrades when completed.
 
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