Nesscraft 488 refurb

[Mopheus]

Have been working at this on and off as I have time - mostly getting the trailer sorted out. Dropped the rollers, aligned the guides, moved the axle forward + boat back, rejigged the drawbar setup so the swingaround extended drawbar would fit again, fitted an L&R Latch, etc. Will likely have to adjust axle position again once the boat is fitted out but it was difficult to manage in its original position with tongue weight somewhere north of 200kg.

Currently working on cleaning + compounding the gelcoat and considering the best method of dealing with unwanted holes and a couple of minor stress cracks on the dash. Do these sound fair?

1. Small fixing holes (6mm) in upper deck shell: chamfer holes top and bottom, back with packing tape, overfill with gelcoat, cure, sand, compound. Shell thickness is around 5mm.
2. Small blind fixing holes (to 8mm) in transom: drill out hole, chamfer surface, blow out dust, pack with poly resin w/ Cabosil thickener, cure, sand slightly low, gelcoat, sand, compound.
3. Stress cracks in dash: chase out to thickness of gelcoat with ball burr, fill with gelcoat, cure, sand, compound.

I realise the proper method is to recess a larger section and patch over the whole lot with cloth reinforced resin, but chances of me colour matching the gelcoat exactly are low so it'd look worse all up than any possible hairline cracking around the boundaries of the patch areas (if that occurs).

For holes that are being retained I'm planning on drilling out slightly larger (say +2mm drill size), filling with thickened epoxy - or just painting it on for the outboard mount through holes - then redrilling into the epoxy.

Just after a sanity check if anything I'm proposing is balls-up wrong.

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[Mopheus]

Bought a gasket set from the US and the intake silencer cover gasket has a tear in it (bottom right corner of photo).

All the other gaskets are fine so I'm not keen on making a fuss. Given that it's on the intake side, I assume a bit of gasket goo across the break will do the job? Or should I go on the hunt for an intact one?

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[gazza2006au]

Moph make sure its fuel resistant silicone and she'll be good to seal up but u wont be able to dismantle it and reassemble with that same gasket in the future

[Dignity]

Mopheus, with the dash have you thought of just covering it with liner, some good stuff out there, relatively thin and covers cracks etc easily. I have some black left over, not sure where you are but do travel to Redcliffe from the Sunshine Coast fairly regularly and can drop it off. It's fairly cheap on fleabay but watch delivery times.

[Mopheus]

Thanks but they're small and easy enough to patch. I may even just leave them - they're very superficial. Will see how close I get the gelcoat match and make the decision then.

It's been suggested by my better half that the garden reticulation should be done before summer arrives though, so goodbye to the next weekend or two

Edit: Added a photo of the stress cracks on the inside radius of the curve. Yet to clean and compound the dash so please ignore the grime.

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[Mopheus]

Added speed holes. She's gonna fly.

Hogged out the ply from inside all the through-holes so the epoxy can barrel out between the transom skins. Nice dry light-coloured shavings with good resistance to the Dremel cutter, other than two below-waterline mounting holes for a deleted stainless step which had some darker material near the outer skin. There's obviously been water ingress to those two fixings but it's only caused discolouration (no rot) so far as I could tell. Pretty happy with its condition overall.

Doweled and epoxied the through-holes tonight - will do the blind holes for deleted fixings tomorrow. Waiting on a 10mm plug cutter for the trim tab holes as they'll be accepting screws into epoxy-bedded marine ply plugs.

Any thoughts on deleting the speedo and pitot tube to free up dash space? The GPS is more accurate for speed over ground; the only thing I'll lose is speed through water - only really useful for trolling but the old pitot tube speedo didn't show anything below 10 knots anyway, so hardly an issue. Any compelling reason for keeping it that I'm not thinking of?

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[shakey55]

Added speed holes. She's gonna fly.

Any thoughts on deleting the speedo and pitot tube to free up dash space? The GPS is more accurate for speed over ground; the only thing I'll lose is speed through water - only really useful for trolling but the old pitot tube speedo didn't show anything below 10 knots anyway, so hardly an issue. Any compelling reason for keeping it that I'm not thinking of?

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Not a bad idea. I don’t believe knowing the speed you are travelling all the time is a must. Yes can be tracked by gps, and will free up a little room on dash

Cheers


Shakey - If only I lived near the coast

[Mopheus]

Roughly laid out the dash tonight - would welcome suggestions.

MAIN DASH
- 85mm VDO Cockpit Vision Tachometer + Hourmeter (to replace current speedo shown)
- Garmin GPSMAP 750S flush mount
- HyDrive 401 helm pump w/ rear mount kit
- Schmidt 716 Vision Elite wheel
- Zipwake controller
- Carling Technologies rocker switches (only have the one that came with the anchor winch atm; like it though so will probs match the others to it)
- ICOM IC-M423G VHF top mounted ... no room to flush mount it =(

SIDE DASH
- 52mm VDO Cockpit Vision Clock (analogue)
- 52mm VDO Cockpit Vision Voltmeter (analogue)
- Eaton Bussman 80A anchor winch breaker (the weird shape under the voltmeter)

I reckon there's just enough room to squeeze a 9" into the dash. Will go with the GPSMAP 750S for now because it came with the boat, but I might update to a Garmin GPSMAP 952xs Plus or similar down the track.

Have thought about moving the tacho up so I can squeeze in the clock and voltmeter below it. I'd have to get the gelcoat colour match pretty spot on for it to not look balls though (whereas the layout below is all cutting; no gelcoat repairs) so not sure it's worth it. I don't mind the clock and voltmeter being on the side.

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[brett62]

Your steering is not going to cause you any trouble reading the sounder ?

Doing a great job on the boat Mopheus and have enjoyed the progress up dates.

[Mopheus]

Your steering is not going to cause you any trouble reading the sounder ?

Yeah, it's far from ideal but neither are the alternatives. Dad had it mounted on the dash and it compromised starboard front quarter vision + required leaning forward uncomfortably to adjust it. The steering wheel is an open three-spoke design and I think it'll work at a pinch.

I might pop the steering in first given its location is known, chuck the wheel on and see how it looks before cutting any further.

Old boats weren't really built with flush-mount chartplotters in mind =)

Doing a great job on the boat Mopheus and have enjoyed the progress up dates.

Thanks for the kind words - it's been glacially slow progress as other projects keep taking priority, but the youngest rugrat is getting old enough to enjoy 'helping' so sometimes I can combine time with kids and time with boat. Winning all round.

[disorderly]

Your steering is not going to cause you any trouble reading the sounder ?

Doing a great job on the boat Mopheus and have enjoyed the progress up dates.

You could always consider mounting the sounder on a Swing arm Ram mount on the dash..I was a bit skeptical at first but now find it rather awesome..

https://chsmith.com.au/Products/Ram-...ets-MB-35.html

[Mopheus]

You could always consider mounting the sounder on a Swing arm Ram mount on the dash..I was a bit skeptical at first but now find it rather awesome.

Not sure I'll have clearance behind the wheel for a swing-arm bracket. I'm pushing the wheel as close to the dash as I can (a couple of inches clearance) as otherwise the seat needs to be too far back and intrudes on the deck area.

It seems the transom repairs are working out pretty nicely. The left one is a deleted through-bolt that's been overdrilled, hogged out inside, epoxy doweled and then over-drilled on the surface so the topping patch (layer of mat w/ poly then gelcoat over) has a decent area of the original poly glass to stick to. I need to break the edge with sandpaper and it's ready to go.

The right one is one of the engine mount holes that has been overdrilled, hogged out inside and filled with neat epoxy ready for re-drilling to size. A few small air bubbles but not bad. I think I'm just going to countersink the epoxy and centre drill - when installing the bolt, the chamfered edge should give the sealant (Sika 291) room to make a donut at the most critical point.

The entire transom will be sanded back once I'm done and a layer of new gelcoat applied. There are heaps of scratches and divots from prior brackets, mounting plates and the like plus colour-matching will be a bit less critical. I think I'm pretty close with the colour match but art has never been my jam.

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[Mopheus]

Mock fitted the helm to the existing hole - access to the plotter is fine given the seat height. Not happy with the position of the wheel though (needs to be slightly up and right) so I'm going to fill all the existing holes, gelcoat the dash and start fresh. That'll let me squeeze in a couple of spare switches and move the voltmeter + clock onto the main dash too. Might even get fancy and make up a steering wedge.

Having issues with the HyDrive helm. The shaft at the top of the keyway is 19.38mm where it should be 19.05mm (3/4") so the steering wheel doesn't slide all the way on. The wheel is slightly undersize (19.00mm) which doesn't help. I spent a movie last night sanding the inside of the stainless hub with 400 grit and achieved bugger all, so I'm about at the point of attacking it with a 20mm flap wheel and hoping the taper doesn't flog out =/

ETA: Steering wedge it is. 10° should be straightforward to construct and gain +42mm knee clearance. Add the 10mm vertical shift from mock-up position and that'll be around 2" extra knee clearance which will be perfect.

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