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Updating the ass end of a Connolly 21

Toolman

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So I have a customer that owns a really nice looking Connolly 21 RC but the cavitation hardware on the back of the boat is really old. So we sat down and talked and he told me about certain parts he wants to reuse and certain parts he wants to upgrade mainly going from anodized aluminum to stainless. The transom blocks from an earlier post called “keeping up with Lenmann”, are the blocks that are going onto this boat.
The first step is to model the back of the boat into the computer. Then start reverse engineering some of the turnbuckles and the hardware that he’s going to keep. Then we start getting crazy with new designs of certain parts of the cavitation hardware. You’ll also see on some of the close-up views of different styles of turnbuckles that we experimented with.
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Now it’s time to make chips! 🤓
 
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coolchange

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Nice but…. How do you tune the plate if you don’t have flats?
 

Toolman

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Nice but…. How do you tune the plate if you don’t have flats
Yes, the second turnbuckle from the left should have flats on it. I just never put them in because we were just going by aesthetics to see what looks the best. The third turnbuckle over has a 3/16 hole drilled through the center of it to use an adjusting tool.
 
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Toolman

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First parts up are the transom blocks. I threw up pics of these parts on another post but I’ll throw a picture of them up on this one. The blocks are 2 1/2 inches longer than the originals. Shown here with pressed in Delrin bushings.
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Toolman

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Next is the transom block backing plate out of stainless. I reverse engineered the original to get the exact location of the mounting holes so is to match holes in the hull. I did the job on my largest machine, the 6030. Got a piece of three-quarter thick by 3 inches wide flat bar and mounted it in two vises with C- clamps to hold it. I drilled the hole pattern in
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half of it and then I machined in the decorative racing stripes on it with a ball nose and mill. Then I just loosened it up, slid it down to the next half, and machined that side complete.
 
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Toolman

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Now we’re moving onto the cavitation plates made of 304 stainless steel. The original plates were aluminum. My goal is to only touch the plates one time. In other words, they go onto the machine once, and then when they come off, they are done. So in the computer I came up with a modular fixture design. It’s just made up of pieces of aluminum bar that will be clamped to the table to hold and support the plates in the fashion that I need them to be held while not getting in the way of machining. I also don’t want to have to move clamps as I go although the clamp in the upper left corner has to be removed to cut the blast plate notch. The long clamp in that same area will take its place for that cut. Then I will just flip everything in the X axis for the other plate.
I fabbed up some alum hold down clamps (shorties) and I already had the long ones. The last pics you can see how it was set up on the machine ready to go.
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Backlash

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Should have been 25.848", not 25.849". That's not going to work, so scrap those and try again.

😁

Making parts to make parts. Absolutely amazing!!!! 👍
 

Toolman

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To drill this 304 stainless steel which I hate, I will be using 135° split point high-speed steel drill bit and instead of coolant and I will be using dark sulfur cutting oil. The boat owner had stated that he wanted to reuse the stainless steel flathead screws and that he really liked the depth of the flathead screws which were only .005 below the surface of the plate which is perfect. The problem was I can’t stick the screws down in through the bars underneath the plate to check the depth of the head. So I got creative and used a ball bearing and measured the old plate depth of the counter sink using a height gauge and made sure that I got the same exact depth on the new plate. I used a smaller ball bearing for the four bolt pattern around the water pick up pole. Then I used a 3/8” 6 flute end mill to cut the water pick up hole and the blast plate notch. These plates are wider and longer than the old plates. The old plates there was a 12 inch gap between them in the center. The new plates go all the way to the center of the boat with a quarter inch gap. So we had to add more holes to the bottom of the boat. We also went from 10 turnbuckles to 12 turnbuckles so the extra two turnbuckles are in the center of the boat.
The nerve-racking part of this whole operation is that we reverse engineered the old plate bolt pattern and double checked it against the hull hoping that all those holes are in the right place when the customer goes to bolt the plates back on the boat.😳
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DarkHorseRacing

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@Toolman what program is that in your first post? Autocad? Solidworks?

I only wish I could wrap my head around doing 3D stuff in a computer, but its the same reason I'm not the second coming of Rembrandt - I cant get what's in my head down my arm and into my hand where what comes out looks like what I had in my mind.
 

lenmann

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Nice work! Having a 6030 on hand to do it all in one setup saves bunch of steps and your back. I did mine on the Bridgeport, old school, pain in the lower back style.

So, did they match the hull?
 

Toolman

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@Toolman what program is that in your first post? Autocad? Solidworks?

I only wish I could wrap my head around doing 3D stuff in a computer, but its the same reason I'm not the second coming of Rembrandt - I cant get what's in my head down my arm and into my hand where what comes out looks like what I had in my mind.
SolidWorks. My first edition was SW’98. I’m on 2018 right now. I also am not good at hand sketching. But I’ve been practicing over the last 10 years with isometric stencils and little rulers and I’m halfway tempted to get one of those old fashion drafting tables with the with the square that has linkage going to the side to keep everything square. I think that would be fun just to play with it. Many times I’ve been asked for a concept drawings of a tool or a product that somebody wants but I don’t wanna spend the time on solid works to do it because the customer’s not gonna pay for it. So that’s where I will give him a pencil sketch and he can take it or leave it.
 
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Toolman

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Nice work! Having a 6030 on hand to do it all in one setup saves bunch of steps and your back. I did mine on the Bridgeport, old school, pain in the lower back style.

So, did they match the hull?
We’ll find out soon. Plates are at polisher. Boat has to be lifted off the trailer to bolt them on. Darkhorseracing was asking about my CAD system. What do you use? Is it beginner friendly?
 
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lenmann

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We’ll find out soon. Plates are at polisher. Boat has to be lifted off the trailer to bolt them on. Darkhorseracing was asking about my CAD system. What do you use? Is it beginner friendly?
I use Alibre Designer, started with it about 5 years ago. All my prior experience was 3d wireframe from back in the day. It was pretty easy to learn, lots of online tutorials, YouTube videos etc. I don’t use it often enough to be really proficient but I get by.

I recently gave Fusion 360 a try, it’s pretty good too but the licensing model is a little onerous.
 

Toolman

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Since we added two more turnbuckles to the back of the boat, the 7/8 round bar had to have two more holes put in it. I just used a locator pin to drop into one of the existing holes and set my XY zero to that. Then flip the bar over drop the pin in the hole again and just run the counter bore tool again.
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Backlash

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Now you're just showing off! 😁 Very nice!!

(What are you doing up at THIS hour?)
 

Toolman

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The last part up is the activation lever, bell rank, or whatever this thing is called. Lol. I had designed a new lever for this boat but after looking at the old lever I decided that we could modify that one instead. First thing I did was whip up a quick fixture to hold the part so I could flip it over and get both sides. The small end of the lever was squared off so I gave it a full radius, a window, and machined a 1/8 radius all around the part. I reverse engineered the lever in the computer but you can see where the cutter didn’t clean up all the way around. This lever had been hand ground on a disc sander and had low spots in a couple of places. But I knew that after we were done the polisher would make it look beautiful. When I was done with it, I decided it needed racing stripes to tie it into the rest of the parts on the boat.
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mattyc

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What an improvement! Very nice, digging this project. Keep it coming
 

Toolman

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Well guess what? The back of a Connolly isn’t so flat after all. We mounted the transom blocks and tried to slide the 7/8 bar through and it will not go through. Upon further investigation, the back of a Connolly is bowed out about .200 approximately from center to the outer edges. So the center transom block had to have .200 machined off of it to bring the outer most transom blocks flush. Then the two inner transom blocks had to have approximately .100 machine off of them to get them to be flush. Lesson learned. I should have put a straight edge across the back of the boat before I even started.
The good news is, the plates lined up with the holes in the hull perfectly. And we ended up with a eighth of an inch gap around the blast plate which is perfect. Exactly what we were aiming for and now we’re starting to put the boat back together.
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Toolman

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Final assembly!. The owner and I got together in front of the shop and bolted on all the turnbuckles on and adjusted the plates sort of close. The first couple of pics are of the original hardware. You can see the exhaust holes in the transom are larger now than they were in earlier pictures. The boats getting an all new Impco exhaust system 4 1/2 inch. The owner of this boat has a little side hustle going called Classic V Drives. Check them out.
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mattyc

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Looks incredible! How many labor hours do you have into this project?
 

Toolman

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Tail pipes are in! This pretty much marks the end of the “Ass End” phase. Parts of it were pretty challenging, but it was pretty cool working on this boat. I will still be doing little projects on it in the future, but owner wants to be on the water in April.
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classicvdrives

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Thank you Toolman, we both have lots of hours on this project. And I'm still not finished yet, more to come.
 
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