fishrmn70
Member
Well, after lurking of this site for some time, I finally have my own project to share. First, a little background on the boat. The boat is a 1988 Bass Tracker Guide V16 Special. My dad bought this boat brand new and has been in the family ever since. The boat came with a 9.9 hp Mercury outboard and pretty much nothing has changed since my dad brought the boat home. The boat is 16 feet long, with a beam of 6 feet. It has a pretty good V to it, but flattens out towards the transom. It is rated for a 40 hp outboard.
My ultimate goal for the boat is to update the interior with new carpet, new paint and add a few features that I feel will increase the fishability of it. Included in this is a complete rewire, the addition of deck lights for night fishing and hopefully a new outboard (a 40 hp would be great). Since I have fished on this boat my entire life, I have been quite acquainted with a few of it's shortcoming, mainly lack of underdeck storage and a small back deck for whomever is fishing with my (or a place for the wife to lay out).
The first step was to pull all of the decks out of the boat. This proved to very difficult due to numerous rusty screws. It seemed as though each piece of deck (and there were quite a few of them) had at least one or two rusty screws that just didn't want to come out. The worst part was the main floor. I would say at least half of the screws were rusted in and needed to be cut out. I started out with a drill, attempting to drill the heads of the screws. This worked for some of them, but the others required the use of the brand new dremel rotary tool.
After the decks were off, I completely sanded the inside of the hull. My goal was to not go down to bare aluminum since the paint was still in good shape, but I wanted to get away from the speckled white paint on the gray undercoat. The plan is to use Rust-Oleum Professional High Performance Protective Enamel in a medium gray color. Some quality time with sandpaper resulted in this....
All of the bare metal was primed with aluminum primer, including a light coat over all the other paint. Unfortunately, this was the last step of the painting for now. Even though I am in Alabama, I can't get enough warmer days in a row to get the paint down.
My ultimate goal for the boat is to update the interior with new carpet, new paint and add a few features that I feel will increase the fishability of it. Included in this is a complete rewire, the addition of deck lights for night fishing and hopefully a new outboard (a 40 hp would be great). Since I have fished on this boat my entire life, I have been quite acquainted with a few of it's shortcoming, mainly lack of underdeck storage and a small back deck for whomever is fishing with my (or a place for the wife to lay out).
The first step was to pull all of the decks out of the boat. This proved to very difficult due to numerous rusty screws. It seemed as though each piece of deck (and there were quite a few of them) had at least one or two rusty screws that just didn't want to come out. The worst part was the main floor. I would say at least half of the screws were rusted in and needed to be cut out. I started out with a drill, attempting to drill the heads of the screws. This worked for some of them, but the others required the use of the brand new dremel rotary tool.
After the decks were off, I completely sanded the inside of the hull. My goal was to not go down to bare aluminum since the paint was still in good shape, but I wanted to get away from the speckled white paint on the gray undercoat. The plan is to use Rust-Oleum Professional High Performance Protective Enamel in a medium gray color. Some quality time with sandpaper resulted in this....
All of the bare metal was primed with aluminum primer, including a light coat over all the other paint. Unfortunately, this was the last step of the painting for now. Even though I am in Alabama, I can't get enough warmer days in a row to get the paint down.
