Nearly finished the SR4...

Nos4r2 · 19 August 2005, 03:15

It's been a hell of a busy week doing this. On Saturday I collected the new leeway composites centre console for the RIB from Southampton.
On Sunday I went to our local chandlers and spent a small fortune on various odds and bits then went down to the RIB's storage.
This is what she looked like Sunday.The tarp had leaked and she had a load of scummy water and a lot of years worth of rubbish from the previous owner floating in her.The brown marks on the transom are thick lumps of ancient grease.

I towed her home and got a full carton of washing powder and the hosepipe out. I gunked the transom then mixed the powder to a paste and scrubbed like mad for nearly 3 hours using the hose to flush it. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the results.

I spent the next day fitting the steering to the console then cutting out and fitting hatches and access panels. It's harder than it looks-I had to spend £25 on a good quality holesaw just to fit the helm. I looked at the bow dodger and decided the rust stains on it were too much so I took a craft knife and removed it. It opened up a load more space and she looks loads better too-I'm glad I did it.

On Tuesday I fitted the console. WHAT A HORRIBLE JOB!!! I had black sikaflex all over me, the console, my clothes and I ran out 3/4 of the way through. Fitting it took nearly a full day-but it's in and solid now.

Wednesday-Checkerplated the transom then the engine went on. Another horrible job. Someone had replaced the lower trim/tilt ram bolts with mild steel so they had to come out-then I realised that the guy I bought the engine from had cut all the wiring for the type 1 trim/tilt and had sheared a bolt off in the trip pump mount. The hoses look horrible-gonna try and replace with braided stainless ASAP-but for now until I can set it all up how I want it the trim/tilt has been removed.The battery cables on the motor had been replaced with household solidcore...
Made a seat base out of stainless steel sheet with a piano hinge at one end for under-seat access. I can fit both 25 litre tanks under there so I need to access it easily.

Thursday. Made new battery leads from 200amp welding cable. Soldered/crimped new contacts on with a blowtorch. Fitted controls,lanyard cut-out,wired in navigation lights and fitted battery box with cut-out switch. The VHF arrived in the post,as did the GPS/fishfinder combo and the compass. My utterly wonderful girlfriend finished covering the seat base.Realised the reason the engine sounded 'flat' was because the fuel I had left from my last boat was nearly 3 months old and was going stale...I Ran her up-and nearly had a fit. The outboard wouldn't go into forward.
I threw a tantrum and was about to buy a new engine on the never-never when I realised that a grey washer had fallen into the gear selector slider during transit and jammed it. 5 minutes later it was out and all seems to be well-just got a minor water leak to sort out round one spark plug , fit electronics and bolt the seat on and she's ready.This was taken just before she went back into storage for the night.It was raining and the tubes had been partially deflated because of the heat.

Hope to have her on the water Saturday...

dctucker · 19 August 2005, 04:46

Nice work! Fast too. It took me an entire winter working in my garage to accomplish less work with my Searider. The before pictures look a lot like mine too, and I installed an older Merc with that same screwy external tilt & trim system.

CJL · 19 August 2005, 08:47

Always nice to see a boat coming back to life!

Hope that you find that all the hard work is worth it and enjoy it loads.

Chris

Shaggy · 19 August 2005, 10:19

Well done mate, look forward to seeing pictures of ya on the water...

Shaggy

pettal · 19 August 2005, 10:32

Quite agree that it's nice to see a boat being given a new lease of life!

Well done, you must be chuffed with the results!

prairie tuber · 19 August 2005, 13:57

Great job, keep the pics coming. I love seeing build up/rebuild threads like this complete with pictures.

Nos4r2 · 19 August 2005, 22:05

Cheers guys!
She's STILL not ready-but all that's left to do now is fit the VHF and gps/fishfinder. All the holes and so on are drilled, just gotta thread the wires and off we go.... I was held up a bit today looking for ONE SCREW for the engine... no-one sells UNC over here unless you buy it genuine-that and I had to get the whole hub assemblies replaced on the trailer which took longer than I thought.

Still aiming to get her afloat tomorrow...

Hightower · 20 August 2005, 00:16

Looks great, I enjoyed reading your build.

Where are you going to Sea trial her?

Andy

Nos4r2 · 20 August 2005, 08:41

Poole,hopefully today-if not then tomorrow.

Hightower · 20 August 2005, 08:54

I wish you the best of British my friend. Don't forget to take some photo's.

Andy

Nos4r2 · 20 August 2005, 17:25

Finished at last-unfortunately too late to go out today so I'm going to be in Poole harbour 1st thing in the morning... Can't wait!

ollyit · 20 August 2005, 20:17

Nice one mate, been working on my sr4 2day aswell.. bloody knackered!

Nos4r2 · 22 August 2005, 00:16

Just got home and it looks like I've done everything right...

Went about 4 miles out off Swanage and did a bit of fishing but failed totally to catch anything yet again...
Only teething problem is that the engine kill stopped working-just a bad contact somewhere but something that'll have to be sorted out ASAP as it meant the kill lanyard stopped working too. Not good.
The flooding hull system is a bit odd-its very hard to keep below the speed limits in the harbour because at 6 knots the flooding chamber slowly empties and she starts to plane-then gets to 15 knots-with no change in throttle. The holeshot's a bit slow because of it too-I think I'll have to block the flooding chamber off.
I can see why boatster uses the smart tabs on his now.
It's pretty good on fuel. We were running for at least 5 hours and only burned about 30 litres-Cheers for selling me the engine Biggles! Most of that wasn't at WOT though as the sea was 3' or so and it was getting a bit hairy once we passed 20 knots and with the lanyard not working I didn't want to play too hard.
Got some pics too but with a waterproof disposable camera. I'll post some when they come back from developing.

Oh yeah.... guess who forgot the plug... We had to use a piece of neoprene from a car window scraper instead...

Jizm · 22 August 2005, 04:21

Looking good mate! Top job. I've done a similar thing to my tornado but it's taken me 4 years and I'm still not finished!

ollyit · 22 August 2005, 09:35

I'm not finished with either mate, loads to do, how was the handling with a 50hp on it then?

dave9960 · 22 August 2005, 09:55

Looks really good.... how do you fancy doing up my searider

) I've still got the old bucket seats.

Top wack on our Searider with a honda 50 on the back is just over 29 knots

Nos4r2 · 22 August 2005, 10:30

I'd be quite willing to if I had the space...

but it'd cost ya...

29 knots with a honda? I'm surprised at that. I had 30 knots out of mine yesterday (33mph on GPS at high tide in 2' swell) and I suspect it'll improve once I fix and install the PTT.That was with 50 litres of fuel aboard. Maybe it's to do with weight distribution?-almost all of mine is in the centre console now.I'm surprised I'm getting more speed with a late 80's 4cyl merc/mariner.

Handling didn't seem bad at all-but like I said earlier the flooding hull is going to go. It's a bit annoying the way the bow points skywards as the water drains out-and that planing thing is going to get me a speeding fine in Poole if I'm not careful.

dave9960 · 23 August 2005, 16:52

We had two up, and quite a full tank.. of course it seems faster when youre sitting right down in the bucket seats right next to the water..

Daniel · 23 August 2005, 18:14

Only just seen this thread - well done. It took two of us over a week to acheive similar progress when we were fitting out the osprey.

Do you have plans (space?) to fit the VHF into the console? From experience it would be a good move, despite best efforts contacts fail when exposed like they are when externally mounted on a RIB.

Nos4r2 · 23 August 2005, 18:45

No-there's not room and it's kept in storage so I can't really leave it on when not in use unfortunately. I've covered the contacts in corrosion-block and the vhf and fishfinder are apparently waterproof anyway...though only time will tell on that one!