16' Valco V-Bottom Conversion

Hey Guys,
First I just wanted to say that this site has been a great resource to me on even planning to start this project. I am NOT good or skilled with tools or woodworking types of activities so this is all brend new to me. I have a few very handy friends helping me with this stuff. Its been a great experience so far & me and a few buddies have decided to go ahead with the project.

What I have is a 16 foot valco v-bottom with a 25 HP Suzuki outboard & a decent trailer. The plan is to take care of a small leak we have in the boat. Strip the old paint, prime & paint it. After that our grand plan is to put in a carpeted deck, a live-well, bilge pump, rod & tackle storage compartments, a bow mount foot controlled trolling motor on a raised casting deck, two fish finders (one up front & one on the transom) & a standing mount to use my Droid X phone as a GPS device for out on the water.

Eventually we would like to clean up the trailer and re-paint that as well. It is a work in progress so I will post what we have done so far. Just keep in mind that I am totally new to this type of thing so we are learning as we go with this project, but we are all learning a TON along the way, not to mention its a ton of fun working on a project like this with with my fishing buddies. Thanks again to this site for the great information and motivation to get it started. Any comments or suggestions are greatly welcomed guys! I hope that I can contribute something to your guyses wonderful community. I will post pictures and try to share what we did as the project keeps coming along. Thanks again tinboats.net!!

Here's after a lot of stripping on both sides. The boat was originally just plain ugly plain white. I didn't want to pay for a sandblasting so I used a 4 1/2 inch grinder with a bunch of 3M sandblaster disks to strip most all of the paint off. This was ALOT more work than I had originally thought it would be. Many, many, many hours of tedious grinding and I went through at least 8 of those 3M disks before I was done. I couldn't get her down to plain aluminum as the paint was very hard to get off. In retrospect I should have maybe used some chemicals on it but I started it this way and was in it for the long haul. Don't ever want to do that again lol

After the stripping I used a cutting wheel on my grinder to remove the middle bench seat as per my plans

After we got the old paint layer grinded off as best we could, we applied two coats of Rustolium Self-Etching primer from a rattle can. There was a good amount of rust under the old paint so maybe grinding it wasn't so bad after all. I didn't actually get any pictured of the primer but it dried pretty fast.

Next we applied two coats of red Rustolium Enamel paint from a rattle can. This was my first time painting anything this size and while it isn't the best paint job in the world I think it came out ok. Not going to win a beauty contest but hey, I think its better than the paint that was on her before.

The next step was to apply the same self-etching primer to the inside of the boat. We are going to put in a deck so I didnt really need to paint the entire inside, however there was a few spots that we were taking in very small amounts of water so I ended up applying Marine 5200 sealant all over the inside and outside of the boat before we painted her. I felt that a little extra paint inside wouldn't hurt it. I ran out of the green so the inside has a different color on one part of it.

After the etching primer dried up we painted the entire inside with a hunter green Rustolium Enamel paint. Its a strange color combination I know, but it was the only color I could find in my area that was not a gloss for the inside. Im not sure I like the way the colors mesh but for now its painted and im very much ready to move onto the decking already. This was some tedious work but its great to see it finally painted.

Here are a few pictures of the current state of the trailer. Its actually in decent shape, but I want to re-carpet the boards and clean up the paint job a little bit. The wiring and lights are all working well.

The next step is to start working on the decking. We went to Lowes and bought up some 3 quarter plywood & 2x4's Hopefully we got enough wood for the whole boat.

We purchased one of those ready-made livewells from bass pro shops so we left a spot to sit it in behind the front bench seat. Our framing for the main deck area is simply a 2x4 skeleton with some ply legs screwed on the main frame sitting over the boats ribs to take the pressure off the L brackets we used when we stand on the frame. We put some legs along the middle of the frame with a horizontal piece of 2x4 laying down along two ribs for additional support. It seemed stable after walking around on it today and it wasn't moving around or anything. We used L brackets to put the 2x4 framing pieces together for most of it. The next step is to work on the decking frame for the front casting deck and the back transom area. We want to get most of the woodworking done before we get started on any of the electronics.

I am really hoping that the deck isn't too high up and makes to boat unstable. i think it will be ok i guess only time will tell so I will have to take her out for a stability test before I move ahead with the carpeting of the deck.

You and your pals are moving right along with that boat. Everyone was a noob at one point and we learn as we go. =D>

We worked on the boat some more today. Got the front deck skeleton done and its now being water sealed.

Here is my rough sketch in paint for the main layout and electrical systems. I'm very new to electrical wiring, if anyone could take a look and let me know if this will work? I'm not sure on were I would need to put grounds if any??? The fuse box is one of the pre-built ones from bass pro shops.

I got my trolling motor, the only issue is that my built in bow is not large enough for the mount. It looks like I will need to extend it out using some plywood. I got a minn kota 55LB edge. Any suggestions or thoughts guys??

Lookin' good! Nice project for you and your buds. I'm in the process of mine redoing a little 12' myself and just debating, what if anything I want to do with respect to painting it, so the info on how much time the grinding wheel method took is really helpful.

Good luck!

Easy

Hi EasternEasy,
Glad the info was of some help. If I had to do it over again I would have probably just sand the old paint down to give the paint something to grip on to and then just paint over the old layer of paint and call it good. Could have even used some paint thinner or something. The grinding wheel method was very time consuming and alot of elbow grease was evolved. The one good thing about it I think was that it got rid of any old rust and sharp edges on the aluminum for the most part.

We got a bit more done today. We used cardboard and some duck tape to get together a template to cut the decks plywood. We also cut and sized out the back panel. I made the cuts as straight as I could, i'm not the best with a saw. Its a bit uneven with some small spaces between the wood i'm hoping that once we carpet it I can hide some of those crooked cuts

It turned out to be pretty stable while walking around on the trailer, tho i'm still a bit worried about it being a bit too high and falling into the lake. Does anybody else have any idea how high up I should start to worry about stability issues on a v-bottom like this?

Update on the boat guys. We worked on it all day today, I got my live-well in and it looks like our original design and measurements for it were off. We had to spend a lot of time revamping our plans to fit in the live-well. What we ended up with is shown in the pictured below. We just had to modify our design and cut out a spot for the live-well to drop into place. We also cut out the front deck for the trolling motor to mount on. I thin what we ended up with is a lot cleaner and much sturdier. We used large bolts to the original seats on the back and front decks to keep them in place.

The various deck parts are now drying and being water sealed. We will start on the hatches and bolt everything down once we are ready to start work again.

Well update on the boat guys. We worked on it all day today and we got quite a bit done. We got the electrical wiring all ran with in a conduit wrap under the main deck. We got the bilge pump installed as well as all the plumbing for the live-well. We were able to get a large portion of the carpeting done as well with the help of my very patient friends I think it came out really well. Besides getting rained on tonight we had a great day of working on the boat today.

We were also able to get the trolling motor mounted and wires ran to the battery in the front of the boat. We used marine sealant to hold the bilge pump in place in both the live-well and the transom area. The bilge pump will drain out of the back transom. We got all the hinges installed for storage and the livewell after the carpeting was done and the main deck pieces was back into the boat. The switch box was also built out today but we still have some electrical hookups to do in the back of the boat for the wiring to be completely done. Here are some pictures of our progress as well as how it turned out at the end of the work we did today.

Its so nice to finally see her coming together. Its been alot of work but its starting to look better each day

Another update on the boat. We got just about everything finished up today. Back decking in the transom area is all carpeted and we got the wiring nearly finished. Solar panels on both batteries are all setup. The pullouts and hinges are all finished as well. We also mounted up the anchor wench on the transom today. All thats left is to mount the two fishfinders one in the back and one up front for the trolling motor and get the seats installed. They should be in sometime this week. This project was a ton of hard work but im really pleased with the way the boat came out. To anyone who is thinking about doing a project like this. Know that it is a ton of very hard work but it pays off in the end. Thanks again to everyone on Tinboats for the great information you guys provide to everyone. It has been a load of help to us. :mrgreen:

Well guys, The boat is all finished and ready for her first test run tommorow. We were able to spruce up the trailer and re carpet it. My buddy did an awesome custom paint job on the motor cap and we finished up all the loose ends for wiring etc. Got both fish-finders installed and all bilge pumping done. Also mounted up the anchor pulley. We got the seats all bolted in place and re greased the bearings in the boat trailer and gave everything one last good washing. We are officaly done with the conversion. Feels great to be done! Wow that was so much work, but it was well worth it for the end results. Below are the last batch of photos. Thanks again to Tinboats.net! :mrgreen:

Outstanding job and I give ya a +10 for wearing dust masks while you did the paint removal.
You said you weren't skilled with hand tools? Look at that workmanship and I think youll agree that you proved you are very skilled. Good job on that boat !!

Thank you MtDewMadMan Ill tell you what those masks seem to catch some very nasty stuff after just a few minutes of removal, glad to keep it out of my lungs.

Nice job on the boat! It is always more fun doing these with a little help from your friends. I'm going to steal your idea of a switch mount. I've been mulling over where to mount mine so it is easy to reach but not where it can get hit or stepped on. Where did you pick up the grey lidded boxes? Is that the livewell or dry storage?

Hey Oldgeek. Thanks for the props on our boat. Glad I could help with an idea for someone else. The location that we put the switch box has worked out really well so far, its was a pretty easy cut and the gap was a perfect fit for the wiring behind it.

The Gray bin is actually the livewell. Its called a "Toho-Rig Livewell". I actually picked it up from Basspro. It wasn't cheap but its really nice because it fits perfectly with the contours of the boat and has straps on each side to hold it in place nicely. It has a ruler on the top for measuring fish and also came with all the plumbing, water pump and a seperator for storing your baitfish and a livewell at the same time if you want. The quality of the polyethylene its made from was actually really nice. It has a built in storage bin in the middle with cupholders on the tops of each lid too which is a nice touch but we covered it with decking so we don't have much use for them in our build. The left and right sides open up the the livewell under it.

Hi Guys,
I just recently found this site and saw ur boat. A really great job I must say! i just recently got a 14 ft. alum w a johnson 25 and a trailor for $500 and was gonna do something to it, and seeing your project, i now know what I'm gonna do. Thanks for posting it and all your pics as this is my first boat and as well my first time to do do any project like this. i really hope my boat turns out half as nice.