...And back on again!

The trailer is now complete. Hooray! Much work was needed, but we've finally got it done. Firstly, the original winch post was so badly damaged that a complete new one has been welded up by Dad. Then all the rollers were replaced, and a frame was welded below the rear roller as it was too low down for the boat.





New mudguards were purchased and new frame welded for those. The whole trailer has been rust treated and painted.



The side rollers have been given a bit of a makeover.

And finally, two new Mini wheels have been bought. I only wanted one as a spare, but the two were in such good condition we bought the pair.

Off the trailer

It was slightly wet. Very windy. But this weekend, we finally removed the boat from the trailer. It took a good few hours, but at the same time it was quite simple.

We made some wooden frames to sit under the boat at both the front and back. We then jacked the boat up a few inches higher than the trailer, starting with the back, and placed it onto breeze blocks. The trailer then simply wheeled out from underneath.



It took a few trials and errors (such as the mudflaps having to be cut off as they wouldn't fit underneath), but it now looks fairly stable. Probably more so than when it was on the rusty trailer!



Now the trailer is free we have taken it back to my Dads, and work can now begin making it more useable. I have a full set of brand new rollers for the main middle section, and Dad is making new brackets to hold the existing rollers on the sides. He has also made a new winch post for the front - initial plans were to repair the existing one, but it was so badly rusted it made more sense to make a new one.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks these should all be attached to the trailer, and the whole thing will have been rust treated and painted.

That's the plan anyway.

The name saga continues...

I have more info on the boat name and make. After chatting with people on the cmba.co.uk forum, and from checking out various boats on eBay, I have found out that my boat is either a Fletcher V139 or a V149. The V139 is just under 14ft, so I’m thinking it’ll be a V149, but it’s just a case of measuring it up and confirming, which won’t be for another week as I’m off to Skegness tomorrow!

They even supplied a picture of the V139 from the original brochure. It’s apparently from the late 60s! Unbelievable. It’s in fantastic condition considering. Just think, when this boat was made nobody had yet landed on the moon, and England were current football world champions…

Take a seat

After a rainy April, hopefully more work should be done on the boat this month. The main progress over the last couple of weeks has been the rear seats. One is now completely finished, and the other isn’t too far off. Dad made the wooden bases, I varnished them, and Mum made the cushions. A real family effort!

The wooden bases have a hardwood frame underneath them, which is designed to slot into the side storage compartments on the boat to hold the seats in place. In the past it looks as though hinges were used, but I imagined it would be a little awkward opening and closing the seats to reach the storage, so we went for the lifting on and off idea instead.



The wooden bases then have a 2” piece of foam on top, and are covered in white fake leather, chosen to match the front seats. However to get a proper colour match I’m going to have to really give the front seats a good clean. Or maybe dirty the rear seats up (would certainly be easier).



Last weekend the side panels were taken off the boat (with great difficulty, due to the rusted in bolts – again, a job for Dad). These will now be re-made and covered in the same fake-leather material as the seats. I think the sponge from the old side panels is still useable, so I’ll give that a clean up and remove all the embedded bolt rust.

Apart from the dashboard, the boat is now completely stripped inside, with only just over a month to get it ready for holidays. Arrrrgh!!!

A new lick of paint

This weekend was about getting the trim/tilt system all up and running again. The actual problem had been cured a couple of weeks ago, now it was a case of putting it back together again.



A sheered off bolt (from the previous owners) had to be extracted. My Dad and his good friend sorted this out last week, with the use of some very hard drills. This weekend, the hole was re-threaded and a new bolt was used.



We also took some time out to give the whole trim/tilt system a bit of a paint.



With a little bit of wiggling, the steering wheel eventually came off, as did the radio. These will both now be replaced with new items (just bought a radio off my mate for £30). The marine radio and antenna were also removed, and will now be sold to make funds for the rest of the boat!

Engine removal - Finding out I'm not quite as 'man' as I previously thought!

It was finally time to do the big job that we had been putting off until we got some nice weather. Strange that we chose to do it on a rainy day then, but at least I had a 37% effective cover to keep putting on the boat during the spells of downpour.

We collected the boat from my Nanna's drive in the morning, and towed it back to my Dad's drive and garage. We thought this would be a good opportunity to finally see the engine running and pumping water, so we connected the hose up to it, connected the battery, turned the key, and...Nothing. I figured the best way to approach this would be to go and make a pot of tea, and let Dad have a look for the problem! Eventually he found a frayed wire going into the solenoid, and upon replacing this, the engine started.

However, it seemed to run extremely lumpy, and coughed and spluttered quite a lot. This wasn't how it ran a few weeks ago! After making another pot of tea, Dad discovered a bad connection into one of the spark plugs - the engine had been misfiring. All this really needed was a trim at the end and a bit of a clean up.

We then broke some kind of seal/o-ring on the hydraulic cylinder using for titling the engine (turning a screw in it allows the fluid to flow so the engine can be moved by hand). This then proceeded to leak hydraulic fluid all over us. It looked nice though, sort of like red wine.

The prop was then removed as it had began making a slightly uneasy noise as it span. This turned out to be grainy grease and dirt around the rim of the prop. Probably due to the fact that it is also the engine's exhaust. We cleaned it up, but I'm guessing it's just going to get the same again until it's had some decent usage and a good blast out.

Right, 2 hours work done, and the boat was at the stage I assumed it was at when I picked it up in the morning, minus one gasket and some hydraulic fluid. Time for lunch!

Now to remove the engine. As expected, this was bolted on with lovely steel nuts and bolts which, whilst probably all looked nice and shiny a couple of years ago, were now rusted firmly in place. Six of them altogether. However, rather surprisingly, the top 4 weren't too difficult to remove. The bottom two posed more of a problem. Especially as the bolts used were about 6 inches long, and the only thing small enough to get at them with was a pathetic little spanner. Still, with a little gentle persuasion, they came off. Obviously, in keeping with the spirit of the boat, there was a piece of rotted, non-water-resistant wood also held on by these bolts, which came off too.

The engine was now just held on by two brackets at the top, and bonded (with another piece of rotted wood) to the outside of the boat with a white resin stuff.

Dad said that two people could lift his old Mercury 50hp engine. So we figured we could lift this...My god! How this is ridiculously heavy!!!!!!! After 10 minutes of struggling, we managed to lift it off the boat (rotted wood attached), and lay it on the floor. I've got a funny feeling it might be staying there forever!



It didn't take long to sort out the problem with the trim/tilt system - from removing the engine it was now clear that a wire going into the motor was a bit dead. This was fixed, and the trim/tilt mechanism worked fine. Well, as fine as it could with half of it's hydraulic fluid missing. Fantastic.

So all in all we achieved what we had set out to do today, which was remove the engine and fix the trim/tilt. We just had a bit more fun along the way!

One more thing worth mentioning is that, upon removal of the engine, the transom had quite a few cracks along the top. It feels solid enough inside, but it is slightly worrying. Maybe this engine is slightly over sized for this boat? We're currently weighing up our options with this. Is it worth putting some extra work in to further strengthen it? Hmmm...

Win or rust!

Today I decided to have a go at removing the side panels on the inside of the boat. However, a try it was as they didn't feel like coming off. I'm starting to notice a pattern with everything on this boat - it all seems to be held together with steel bolts which are now rusted firmly in place! Since I didn't have the tools to hand or the Dad with me to assist, I figured this should be a job for another day.







I then had a go at t-cutting the windscreen, trying to remove some of the small scratches on the surface. This didn't go too well either, as it could do with a lot more hard work, and frankly, it was too cold and I wanted to go home.



My least productive day so far? Most probably.

Named and shamed

In the neverending quest to find out what boat I have, my Dad has found one exactly the same on Ebay. Not much information is known about this either, but apparently it is a Fletcher.

My knowledge of Fletchers is quite good from the late 70s onwards, so it must be a bit older than that. I must say, she's aged very well.

Seat removal and carpet clean

It's been a couple of weeks since I'd so much as seen the boat, but with some nice sunny weather, and no bloody dog show to go to like last weekend, today I set about a doing a few tasks.

The main priority is still generally giving the boat a good clean, and today I wanted to set about the carpet. Especially the area in between the two rear seats. As you can see in the below pic, it's quite grubby!



The easiest way to do this was by using a scrubbing bush with hot water and washing up powder, and then blasting it with the pressure washer. At least that was the plan - first the front seats would have to come out to make space...

I'd sort of wanted to remove these seats anyway, as the wood they were mounted on didn't look too healthy. In truth it was a bit of a bodge job. Removing these seats was fairly painless however, just six screws underneath the base cushion holding them onto the wood.



The aim was to get the wood base plates off today as well, but they were so rotted in place I decided to wait a while. I may have to get a saw to them anyway, and creating saw dust when I'm about to get everywhere wet probably wasn't a good idea! So they would have to stay for now...



After this I gave the boat a big clean with the pressure washer. It now looks a lot better.

I've also made the decision this week to go with the two seat seats at the rear, rather than the planned bench seat. The areas that support the seats could be structual, so it's probably not a good idea to remove them to make a seat! Plus they make nice storage compartments for my sandwiches.

I've also given the seats a decent clean with soapy water now they are out. The wood in the seats is rotting in a few places, so it may have to be replaced. Hopefully the clean I've just given them won't speed along the rotting process!

And since I never posted the picture on the last update, here is the boat looking proud without it's crap name.

A good Spring clean. If Spring means standing in the cold, freezing your b*llocks off, whilst peeling at vinyl letters

Today I spent the day giving the boat a good clean. It's no longer minging to walk or sit in, it's actually quite nice. I've also drained pretty much all of the water from under the floor by standing with the front of the boat held high for about 5 mintues!

I also had the chance to take a few pictures, including a close up of the name before I got rid of it. It took a good half hour to remove it from both sides and the transom, but with good use of a hot air paint-stripper and some thinners, all is gone (obviously I took the pictures before this - my tired hands were in no state to hold a camera afterwards). It looks quite good, and it's quite hard to see where the name ever was.

We've come up with a list of what should be done with the boat:

New rollers for the trailer - The current ones are damaged and mishaped
New cover - Both one for the engine and boat, as at the moment, the cover is slightly too small
New steering wheel - The current one is badly rusted
New rear seats - Rather than simply re-covering the rear seats, it's probably better to make new ones. I'm undecided yet as to whether I want a bench seat or to keep the two rear seats idea
Fix the engine trim/tilt - This is more one for Dad than me, as I have no idea. But yeah, it needs fixing
Weld trailer - A few bits that need re-welding. Again one for Dad
Paint trailer - Including a good amount of rust treatment
New dash/side panels - Rather than recovering the current ones (the wood is a little rotten), it's probably best we make new ones from marine ply. I'm currently in two minds as to whether I would like to cover this or just varnish the wood
Speedometer - Hasn't got one at the minute
New speakers - Being a bit of an audio engineer, the current poor quality, one speaker set up offends me quite a lot
New stereo - This is only a maybe, as I sort of like the radio cassette. It reminds me of my first car, in a retro-tastic kind of way