Hello All,

It's about time for me to begin phase two.
First a little back ground.

January 1st, 2008 I bought a 14' Alumacraft from my wifes uncle for $150. It came on a trailer vintage 1950's and pretty beat up. Buddy had a trailer a friend of his dumped because he broke a spring while on the highway which tossed his boat into the ditch and did some damage to the trailer. We loaded the boat trailer up onto a flat bed trailer and drug it to my house.

Phase 1
Building a boat trailer from junk!

First thing I had to do was develope a plan.

Axle shot, frame bent, rusty, no lights, bunks shot. Hmmmmmm!


The plan was to whack up the tongue off the old trailer and use that for the tongue on this new trailer. I wanted the transom to sit on the bunk and that meant lengthening the trailer tongue. Meant giving up the folding trailer feature, but oh well.

I took the tongue off the rebuildable trailer and used it for my axle. Sorry no pics of that process. I has to make some shims so the spindles would fit in goodentight. Then drilled a 5/16" hole trough the new axle and spindle and installed a bolt with lock washer and red loctite. Had to use a 5 pound sledge to beat the spindles into teh axle. She isn't coming apart.

I stripped everything off the rebuildable trailer, sanded every square inch to clean metal or solid paint, straightened the frame and spring hangers, and started painting. First 2 coats of rustoleum sealer, and the last 3 coats with rustoleum black metal flake paint. I must have used 10 cans of spray paint.

Phase one Complete.













Couple of shots at the lake right after I got off the water. Boat doesn't leak. Trailer works great. Trolling motor and fishfinder are awesome. Plus with that 18hp she get up on plane.





I caught a few.

Alright. 1 year later and it's time for Phase Two.

I know the trailer works and the boat doesn't leak. Plus I can catch a few dinks in it.

Ebay has been my friend the past couple of months.
I have collected a lot of parts.

The only pic I have for this post is my plan.

I left the dimension line so you could get an idea.
I will be removing all bench seats, most are dry rotted anyway.
I will be using the bench supports which are riveted to teh sides as supports for my decking. I left the supports in the picture and they have dimension line next to them on the starboard side of the boat.

This year I anticipate having about 130 pounds of dogs with me and maybe my son or wife.
It may take me a month or so to get the work done. I work full time, will be driving up to my brothers to frame up his basement on the weekends. That leave weeknights to work on the boat.



Tell me if there is anything in particular you want detailed pics or information about. I'll do my best to get that into the thread. Give my plan a going over and ask questions. Now is the time to fix any oversights. I hate doing rework!

Looks like a pretty good plan.

Couldn't reall read the "plans" but looks well thought out.
One question,you had a 7.5 then someone gave you a 10hp...Where did the 18hp come from.
Boat looks nice.

Nice work!

Original 7.5 HP + New 10hp = 17.5HP Rounded up is 18HP.



Just kidding!!

@ Hanr3
Could you re-post your plan, it is too small for these old eyes to make out everything!


Craig

Oh I can't wait to see what you are going to do with this boat. This is same year and same make as my boat that I am doing. See link below. I also have a Johnson Sea Horse motor, mine is a 18 horse. Let me know what you think, and I will be keeping a close eye on this project, maybe we can trade pointers on what we have done. Looks good so far.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5726

You didn't hear this from me. However said Uncle fished on lakes that had a hp restriction. He changed the cover from the 18hp to a 10hp cover. I did the research and it is in fact a 18hp motor. Model FD-11.

As for the plan. I managed to convert it to a sie that should be reaable. It wasa a round about way since I couldn't get Visio to enlarge the image like I wanted.


Color coding since the pic still isn't big enough to read it.
Orange=Battery (one battery compartment on port side of bow seat, optional battery / storage compartment on starboard side of bow seat.

Gray= Anchor compartments.
Green= Storage
Long dark green= pole storage.
Red= gas tank
Blue= lights, and a switch next to each light.
I also have a master switch panel on the port side with fuses.
there will be one accesory plug and one trolling motor plug on the bow and port side next to the master switch panel.


Right now my biggest delima is the 5' span on each side of the open floor on the back half of the boat. I plan to leave the space under the little 6"-7" wide deck to hang my poles. That means no verticle upright half way down on the outside edge (towards the open floor). I dont want work the poles around a post in the middle of the opening if you understand what I mean. Looking for suggestions.