Finally getting a new (to me) tin boat, a 1436

[danmyersmn]

looks great!!! Good solid progress. The bunks lined up perfect for you.

 

[lcdr frank]

Had a 1436 Cajun special much like yours, 25 merc short shaft. The wife and I loved it for the bayou. With the motor tilted up 4 in draft. Push poll was great. Wished it had a taller transom.

 

[Hydrilla]

Cool rig, that must've flown with a 25 on it!

I planned for an easy Sunday afternoon of working on the boat, nothing too hard. Of course nothing ever works out as you expect. The two main things I wanted to get done is placing/installing the bow roller/winch stand post, and installing the lights and trailer wiring. Within 5 minutes I realized I had a problem. When I determined where the winch stand needed to go, I found that it would have to go right over a weld where the previous owner had extended the tongue. It was a real beefy weld, and there was no way the winch stand was going over it. So, I had to grind it down on the top and sides, which took quite a long time. After I got that fitted, I realized the bolts wouldn't go through underneath, because of this silly contraption the previous owner added, I'm assuming to prevent the wiring from getting crimped since he had no tongue jack. I'm attaching a old pic of this so you know what I'm talking about.

After all that, I re-primed and painted the areas I had to grind. I did finally get to the wiring, and that's about all I had energy for today. I won't have much to update until the weekend. I should accomplish a ton this coming weekend, including building my deck frame, and cutting/coating/carpeting my deck and floor.

 

[Nick Jones]

This is my subscription! nice work man! the one thing you learn from redoing these old boats is that people spend more time jacking them up than they do fixing them.

I am ready to see what ideas you have for the inside.

 

[Hydrilla]

I got the winch stand mounted, and finished running the wiring, only to find that I've got a wiring issue. I wasted a good bit of time on it last night and it's not fixed, but I know it can't be anything that major. Even though I made sure where the ground wire goes was clean and clear of paint, I know most problems like this are ground related. Once the remnants of this hurricane blow through, I'll get back out there and figure it out.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Couldn't tell from the pics, but if you have a split trailer it may be causing a ground problem for the lights. When I did mine, all of the lights worked until I hit the brakes, and then they all went out. Did some reading and found it was due to a weak ground. I ended up running a second ground wire from the ground in the front part of my trailer to a spot on the back half. Also found that when I painted the trailer it covered the mounting holes for the lights themselves and it was getting a weak ground there.

 

[Hydrilla]

Wow, thanks! that makes a whole lot of sense. Yeah it is a split trailer as you call it. I've painted the **** out of it, too :lol: None of the lights are coming on at all. I have a test light and I think I'm getting the readings I should at the plug, but I'm not positive. The ground wire up front seems ok, yet the lights don't work. Here's something that would probably mean something to a guy that knows more than me about this stuff- When I put the test light probe INSIDE one of the splice connectors near one of the trailer lights, and ground it wherever, not only does my test light come on, but the actual trailer light comes on! :?

Couldn't tell from the pics, but if you have a split trailer it may be causing a ground problem for the lights. When I did mine, all of the lights worked until I hit the brakes, and then they all went out. Did some reading and found it was due to a weak ground. I ended up running a second ground wire from the ground in the front part of my trailer to a spot on the back half. Also found that when I painted the trailer it covered the mounting holes for the lights themselves and it was getting a weak ground there.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

I'm no electrical expert, but from everything I've read on trailer wiring 90% of the problems seem to be from a bad / weak ground connection. If you're putting the tester in the connector and then grounding the tester out well, I would think that this is helping to ground out the system allowing the lights to work. Again, I'm just guessing. Hope it works out for you. I know I was starting to get a little frustrated with mine when I was having problems with it :evil: .

 

[danmyersmn]

You can 2 one of two things and either one would probably solve your problem. I assume you have a ground wire that is screwed to the trailer up close to the hitch? I also assume you have your lights grounded by screwing to the trailer back by where they are installed?

You can either run a wire from the screw in the front by the hitch to the screw by one of the lights. That will jump the ground over your hinge in the split and ground all your lights. You would only need to do this to one of them and it should give you a solid ground.

You could also put in a small jumper ground wire that would jump the hinge on the split. Use a sheet metal screw and screw the wire to the trailer on one side of the split and wrap it to the other side of the hinge and do the same thing. Either way you will complete the ground.

Tilt trailers are awesome so its worth getting past the darn wiring problems for when you need to use the tilt. Especially when you decide your going to launch at one spot on a river with a twelve pack of beer and float down fishing smallies. You overshoot your takeout and need to float to the next one only to find you cant get the trailer into the water more then a few inches. OOPPS!! Darn current, or umm beer, or umm, yeah the river..shouldn't of missed the first take out

 

[lckstckn2smknbrls]

When I rewired my trailer I ran a ground wire to each light. So far I've had no issues with my lights.

 

[Hydrilla]

Awesome tips. Based on what you guys are saying, again it's very obvious to me I'm not getting a good ground, especially since I can ground one of the trailer lights with the test light probe, and the light comes on. That tells me almost certainly that the back half of the trailer, and/or the lights themselves aren't being grounded correctly. Y'all probably just saved me a bunch of time, thanks.

 

[Hydrilla]

Man, you guys rule. Shelby the fishing dog and I went out in the cold, wind and rain for nary 10 minutes and got the wiring problem licked. All it took was unscrewing the lights, and scraping a little bit of paint so the star washers and nuts made good contact. Bingo! Lights on.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Way to go man! Glad to hear everything worked out for you.

 

[Hydrilla]

I'm trying to make the best of some crappy weather, and work on planning my front deck support structure. I don't visualize things really well, I do better with drawings, even crude ones if they work. In this case, I decided to use some online graph paper- I did a search for free online graph paper, and found a link to a bunch of pdf files of different kinds. I just did a screen capture of a section of one, copied it to MS Paint, and started drawing based on the dimensions I took of the front half of my boat. As you can see, it turned out well. I used the scale 1 square = 1 inch. This isn't filled out yet, I just thought someone might benefit from this idea.

I know this is only 2 dimensional and of limited value in the case of planning deck support structure, but I still find it helpful. It would be a big help I would think in the planning of decks, flooring, compartments, etc.

EDIT: I did a side view one too, and no doubt it will at least help me estimate how much aluminum angle I need, at least. The "bumps" in the side view drawing are the ribs.

 

[Doug]

8) Thanks for the info., I had not tried to use any online graph paper before but that seems very useful. I know what you mean about the weather it's been raining here for 3 days straight but that will just put more water in some of my area's I fish .

 

[Hydrilla]

Today was a total bust, I didn't get anything done so far. I have jumped through a bunch of hoops to get the boat registered, and now today I found out I'm still missing a step. I have paperwork saying the guy I bought it from purchased it from another guy and never registered it. Cool except the guy he bought it from wasn't the last guy who registered the boat, it was the guy before him. If it wasn't for my wife I would have listed it (boat only, not trailer) on Craigslist today. But she is in contact with a lady who works at a tackle shop and knows how things operate in the mystical land of Raleigh, and they both swear they can and will see it through. Based on that, I bought my aluminum angle and plywood tonight, and I'll probably work until I'm too tired tonight. Good grief, it's just a folded up piece of tin, it's not like it's a gun receiver or anything.

 

[lckstckn2smknbrls]

Judge Judy will tell you not to spend any money on anything you don't actually own.

 

[Hydrilla]

I was overreacting, I've been on with the wildlife commision today and it's no big deal to get taken care of. My wife is handling it since she works at home.

I am almost finished with my front deck frame, it's just short a couple/few vertical legs in the middle. It probably took me a lot longer than it did most of you, it took a good bit of time just to wrap my brain around what I wanted to do. Once I got going, it got easier. I will say it helped me to mock up part of it with cardboard to help me visualize what I was doing. It's already stable enough that when I grab one of the sides and shake it, the whole boat moves, and that's all that moves. Here's a pic. The pedestal base is just sitting there, it's not attached. I'm going to add 2 more vertical supports to the middle, and 1 more to the center rear of the frame. I may also add a flat piece across the top toward the front, just to stabilize it a little more yet.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, instead of the deck going from bench to bench, it will sit on the middle bench and run up to the bottom of the front bench, or whatever the raised front part is called. That's what the angle of the middle bench is, I didn't see any other way to do it. That's totally fine with me, I'll add a small deck piece to the front, put a trolling motor mount on one side (extending it out further if necessary), and a fishfinder on the other side. I can't see needing to walk around that close to the bow too much anyway.

 

[danmyersmn]

I think that deck is going to work out great.

It probably took me a lot longer than it did most of you, it took a good bit of time just to wrap my brain around what I wanted to do. Once I got going, it got easier.

I bet if you factor in all the time I have spent standing at the side of my boat staring into it plotting things in my brain I have you beat in amount of time per accomplishment.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

It probably took me a lot longer than it did most of you, it took a good bit of time just to wrap my brain around what I wanted to do. Once I got going, it got easier.

I bet if you factor in all the time I have spent standing at the side of my boat staring into it plotting things in my brain I have you beat in amount of time per accomplishment. [/quote]

With you guys on this one. Definitly spent lots of time just staring and planning.