17T side-console project

[fishmanjj]

sweet rig !  great job on the rework...she looks really good.

[bdsnook]

Nice....I gotta find me one of those boats.....

[EarlyTimes]

A few pics and notes on the compartments.

The boat came with a portable tank system, but I was able to buy an original aluminum tank from a guy who had switched to portable. I didn't want to screw it down to the floor of the plastic tub, because I worried the screw tips might hit the inside of the hull as the tub flexed in chop. So I shaped little tapered strips out of 1" x 2" wood, glassed them to the bottom of the plastic tub with G/flex epoxy, and then screwed into those. Then I shaped a couple of small "feet" to support the aft end of the tank and glassed those in as well. Then added filler cap and hose and vent hose and fitting.

The tank looked terrible and was full of cobwebs and who knows what else, so I flushed it out extensively, then cleaned all the muck off the exterior, sanded, sprayed with self-etching primer, then Rustoleum. I'm pretty pleased with the results. It's rock-solid, no fuel odor, and looks quite a bit better. I also added a water separator on the wall of the aft compartment.

Electrically, almost everything on the boat worked when I bought it, but it had no master switch and some other weird stuff, like a single on-off-on switch for the bait and bilge pumps so you could run the bait pump or the bilge pump but not both. I tore most of it out and added a master switch, new fuse box, and switch panel. It's not one of those geometrically perfect wiring jobs with 4,000 zip ties that's capable of withstanding complete immersion in saltwater for three weeks, but it's logical and it works. I also added a new breaker and new trolling motor wiring in the bow.

More later about reinforcing my flexing, creaking, rattling hatch lids...

[fishmanjj]

very nice...