Rocky Mountain Monte Carlo

[tysman52]

I have made some progress over the winter. Engine is installed. Waiting for the driveline to arrive to do my alignment. Plumbing, blower and electrical done. The first time I turned on the batteries I was expecting a fire or nothing to work, but amazingly every light, bilge, blower etc all turned right on as designed! That was followed by turning the key to make sure it would crank over and it did. So now I can breath a small sigh of relief and move on to the deck. I wanted to get it in the water for a test run first, but not warm enough yet so I am plowing ahead.
I actually thought all of the mechanicals were going to take me longer to do but it went quicker than expected. Looking forward to working with wood again, a bit more familiar for me.
Decent chance of it floating this summer but we will see...
JT

[tysman52]

[tysman52]

[Bill Edmundson]

JT

Great Job! Mech. and Elect. checkout is a BIG step!

I just got the stuff that I didn't do on the Bartender straightened up.

Bill

[tysman52]

Thanks Bill...
The driveline arrived today so I began the alignment process. I tried to order it over the winter but they weren't making new shafts until now so I probably got a little ahead of myself trying to keep myself busy continuing on the build without it. Turns out I installed my strut about 1 or 2 degrees off of where I drilled it. So I am enlarging the shaft hole slightly and I think will be ok.I should have waited for the driveline to arrive to install the strut, but live and learn.
There is some slight natural flex in the driveline so I am hoping I will be able to still get a good alignment and balance taking this into account. Getting my .003" feeler gauge out makes me wonder if I will ever get it perfect!
I sure make a lot of trial and error mistakes. I think I could build a second boat in half the time as this one!

-JT

[tysman52]

Did water test last week. Everything amazingly worked perfectly. No adjustments needed. Got up to 50 mph without thinking!

[tysman52]

Time to finish things off! Not looking forward to the sanding and varnishing and repeating and repeating
JT

[jenko]

looks great and looks like it goes well .Great work

[mrintense]

Very cool JT. Now that you've had a taste, the sanding and varnishing will fell even more like a labor of labor.

[Milhouse]

Getting my .003" feeler gauge out makes me wonder if I will ever get it perfect!

How close did you end up getting it aligned? Any pics?

[kens]

I gave up trying to get alignment within .003"
I just get it close and go boating !!!

[tysman52]

I ended up getting it to .003. It took a lot of back-and-forth with a crowbar but finally got it. In hind sight I wish I would have drilled the prop shaft hole about six or 8 inches further forward. That would have allowed the engine to sit lower. I have about 6 inches between the engine bottom and the keel. I ended up having to notch the deck beams of the hatch covers to get them to close and I am going to have to move the coolant overflow to a lower position somewhere. Finishing up the deck now and hoping to have it finished this summer sometime. I got a bid from Stan Craft in CDA Idaho for the upholstery. Bid came back at $22,000. Looks like I will be using the local guy!

JT

[Milhouse]

Ken

I gave up trying to get alignment within .003"

How close is close enough? I have heard horror stories?

JT - Thanks for the info!

$22K for some upholstery - wow! what did the local guy quote (or are you the local guy )

[tysman52]

Jim-
I thought it was going to be harder to get it to .003” but it wasn’t too bad. Probably took 30 minutes or so of very small adjustments. My recommendation is to get the left and right as close as you can first because that you have to do with the crowbar. After that you were just working on up and down which is much easier to do with the adjustment bolt on the engine mounts. You’ll get it!

On upholstery I ended up going to the best local guy. I thought I would cry once on the price and get it done right. He said it will be between $7000 and $9000. Still ouch! He said he would be honest and fair but had never done one like this and was not sure how involved it was going to be. I’m sure the bill will come back at $10k!

JT

[tysman52]

Thanks to everyone for the varnishing/polishing tips on my other thread. Got the deck stained and ready for varnish. I used Chris craft red on the main deck and top sides. I used brown interstain followed by minwax ebony for the dark.
Mike is about to put my cutwater and transom bands in the mail. I think I have all the hardware so it’s coming together...
JT