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Woohoo...happy days.
Glad you got it,did she make you take the water logged wood:)
Have fun with it.
 
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Thanks guys - I just got home from fishing, and the rain has left out for a bit, so I'm going to take pics and do a little work... then I'll be back later tonight with pictures and commentary!
 
gimme a sec... I just got in the house and they are uploading. Should be ready in a few
 
Tyler (bassfisher6) and I finally trekked out to Athens to pick the boat up, we walked down the hill to check it out and see what just needed to be done. We immediately started taking out the screws holding the decking in place. I told Tyler to see if he could pick the tongue of the trailer and it was heavy. We spent about 30-45 min just trying to get all of the rusted deck screws, lag screws and everything else this guy could find to put the rod locker together. I cut back some of the carpet on the floor and saw the wood was wet - and I mean SATURATED THROUGH WET. We finally kicked the rod box apart and it took both of us to lift the floor out - a full 4x8 sheet of saturated marine plywood that weighed about 200lbs (no joke). I get on the lady's 4 wheeler and back it up to get a running start at that hill - no prob, it made it up without the added weight of the decks. We were going to leave the wood and stuff at the bottom of the hill (out of sight, out of mind) - BUT, the lady called me and asked what I did with it. Needless to say, we ended up going back down the stupid hill to get it out. Now it's in the woods behind my house... Tyler and I did stop and wash it on the way home... you'll see the clean boat pics in a bit

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Now that I have the boat home!!!, here comes the pics. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do first so I looked at the inside of the boat and remembered I had just bought a 150qt marine cooler (BJs wholesale has them for $70, so Tiffany approved and I paid.. man this thing takes up some room... guess I'm going to have to put a small sheet of something underneath because it barely sits on top of the channels. I've got a size 24 battery that will run all the electronics in the boat, including the circulation pumps and all that jazz for this bad boy.

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Then how much room it takes in and then what it looks like when it's out...

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Then I looked up and remembered the shotty wiring... this guy took Liquid Nails and put the wire conduit against it and the side walls... needless to say a putty knife, flat head screwdriver and hammer were necessary.

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Then I decided to go ahead and take off the trolling motor (which didn't work).. The #@#$@ owner used 3" lag screws (phillips head) to connect the top 2x6 to the bottom and then counter sunk lag bolts in the bottom piece to the deck. I ended up having to split the wood - I even found a nest of TINY ants in the middle of one of the pieces.

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(here are the ants)
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but then I remembered that I better take care of the trailer. So once I knocked off the mis-matched bearing buddies (non bearing buddy brand) I saw why the wheels had about 1/4" play in them - the castle nut needed to be tightened up another notch. But I went ahead and repacked the bearings since I took off the bearing buddies - MAN THAT STUFF WAS NASTY! Keep in mind this boat hasn't been moved since 2004. And before I could make the journey back home, I had to replace the wheels/tires. The other ones were dry rotted and had flat places, not to mention not holding air.

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Then it was on to the trailer light issues... the casings were there, but like most of the openings on the trailer, they were inhabited by wasps. I took out 6 nests on the trailer (not including the nest in each of the rear lights). Anyways, new LED lights and new wiring. They did this trailer right... they welded nuts along the inside channel (out of sight and I forgot to get pics) to run the wiring through. Piece of cake!! and these Blazer LEDs are brighter than the LEDs I got at Wal-Mart for my last boat. I got these at AutoZone (military discount works at some of these places too if you keep it quiet)...

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The right turn signal is on... that's why it looks like it's winking - these things pulse when the flashers are on - they're awesome

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I don't like the plastic license plate frames that come with these lights, and for some reason I had a metal one laying around. Found a can of flat black spray paint and painted it up. While I was waiting for it to dry, I got to looking at the trailer... well, the tongue got painted black. And I was considering changing the coupler, but it's welded and paint makes it look brand new again. I think I'm going to use Herculiner on the trailer like Brine did. I've got a gallon a coworker gave me, but I'm going to wait and see how Brine likes it first..

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After
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Well, it's rack time and I've been up since 6am. Fished for a little while this morning and caught one, but it's been sent to Jim, so I won't post it here... BUT, the sorry rascal finned me. I've never been finned by a spotted bass, but my pinky is swollen about twice the size (not any more) but if you look, there are 2 pin holes up top, well the one to the right actually went all the way through my finger and came out - that's what the slit is at the bottom.

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Here's some cleaned up pics of her... still trying to come up with a color scheme - right now I'm thinking black paint with yellow lettering (even though another guy in my club did that, I'm going to see how his heat issues are this summer before I follow through.)... but then again, I may leave it like it is - I have no idea how I would be able to get this boat off and flipped over by myself

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I love that. You truck is in the garage, and the wife's car is in the driveway..... :lol:

The way things should be. =D>


I have no idea how I would be able to get this boat off and flipped over by myself
Lemme know when you want to do that. I can be over to help.
 
welder said:
Russ, that's a score and she is coming along good .

Looks like a very stable boat and would haul booty with a 9.9 on her .
He's going electric only. Now, were it mine, I would put a 40 on her, and she would really fly. :lol: (what I have on mine, which is a 1542) He is the tournament director of a small waters electric only bass club, so it is trolling motors front and rear for him.
 
Looks great Russ! Im happy for ya.

Just think how it will look without that nasty ol' camo. i think that almost has to be changed. I really liked that blue you had on your last one. My boat it just unfinished aluminum right now, and i dotn have to time to paint it, or i may consider that blue you had. i thought it was sweet. I also kinda like white boats...
 
All electric , cool . I'm thinking twins, heck, tripples on the back . Yep trips just incase ya throw a prop.

If your going quite at least go fast.

Dang , now ya got me thinking , THANKS. :mrgreen:
 
HA - that's not the wifes car outside.... that's mine! I've got the Accord and the pickup, she's got the Avalon. The only reason the truck was in the garage was because that's where I parked when I came back from fishing with you. I couldn't pick the batteries up so I just drove in there and left them.

As far as motors... I've got a 71# to put on the front, and for the time being I'm going to have 2 - 55# TMs on the rear... but I'm going to replace both of those with an 82# or a 101# - just need to build the boat fund back up
 
That thing looks NICE! Can't wait to watch the build. I know the plans aren't to go overboard, and it really doesn't need it. Just extending the front and rear decks with aluminum framing and 1/2 ply decking will add very little weight.

I'm with ilinimud, I vote for you going back with blue. It's a nice color and it's easy to pick you out on the lake... of course maybe that's not a positive :roll:

I'm glad after all that drama that you finally got it!

-- Poolie
 
I'm not going to paint it right away... atleast I'm not planning to. I want to wait until my tourney schedule slows down a little - which it will after this weekend.. next one is not until June 20th. So... I'm not going to do any decks or basically anything until I get it painted inside and out. I don't want to deck it and then flip it over and paint.

Besides... jason still has my air compressor and paint gun so I can't paint it yet.

I'm probably going to go back with the Blue and orange... the only thing is - my 1236 I sold Tyler is the same color and we fish the same tx's so I was wanting to do something different - which kind of puts me to black and red - or red and black. I've also found a grey color that I like a lot and you'd still be able to spot me a mile off with those bright orange stickers on the side - no one will have that I'm almost positive
 
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