Ready for the winter

Great warm day. Decided to fire up the motor and change the oil. Hooked up the hose to the lower unit and fired up the motor. Took about fifteen minutes for the engine to warm up. Once all good and warm shut her down and sucked out the oil. Once again I love the Mini-Vac for getting oil out through the dip stick. Change the filter and poured in 4 fresh quarts of oil. Fired her back up and checked for leaks. All looked good so off came the flame arrestor. Brought her up to 1500 RPM and then sprayed Sea Foam cleaner and anti corrosion into the carburetor until she stalled. Switch off, flame arrestor cleaned with B12 chemtool and reinstalled. Then opened up all of the trains in the cooling system and let her drain. With all the water out of the cooling system, the shop vac was used to clean up the water that was trapped in the bilge.

Now the cold can come.

October 2011

Very busy month started off with the Heartland Classics boat show at Grand Lake. Check out the photos from the show here. http://www.heartland-classics.org/2011/10/2011-mahogany-and-chrome-show/ and for a written report check out this link http://www.heartland-classics.org/2011/10/201-mc-report/, Weather was beautiful, cool, clear and calm. 50+ classic boats on display.

The Crestliner ran great for the weekend. Did discover that she is leaking a little more oil than I like out the rear main seal. May have to R&R the motor this fall. The drive ran good though. While at the show I learned how to remove the windows to replace the glass. So another fall project will be new glass in the side windows. As well as probably a new horn.

Drain Plug

Many folks have said the drain plug is 3/4" pipe thread.  However mine is not. It turned out to be 15/16-14. I purchased the standard 3/4-14 pipe and a buddy turned it down on the lathe. Works perfect. Not sure if others have had this problem or not. Let me know if you have.

Good news

Tech at Bayer called. Everything is ok in the drive. Preload on the gears was a little tight and causing some noise. Nothing serious. Should be ready next week.

Dropped off at Bayer Marine

Well I have a couple of weeks so I dropped her off at Bayer to het their opinion on the whirring sound from the top of the drive. They said about a week. Hoping they tell me no problems found. Just the way the drive sounds. Have fun and fix your engine oil leak.

One coat of Largo Blue

After the PreKote was dry, I sanded the primer with 220 grit. Once everything was "scratched" I started brushing on Interlux Largo Blue. This seemed to go on nice and smooth. I mixed together two old cans I had on the shelf from a wood canoe project. That was enough for the first coat, but I had to order another can for the second coat. That was last weekend. The second coat was more of a problem. On the port side I brushed it on. It kept sagging bad. Could not figure out why. All I needed was some color as the first coat had done a great job of covering the primer. I finally got something that was acceptable. However, I loaded the sprayer for the starboard side and sprayed it. This worked really well. One thing I did was thin it out with the universal Interlux thinning fluid. So after spraying I went back to the port side and brushed out the sag areas with the really thinned paint. For the most part it all worked out. Here are the pictures after the first coat.

Painting the Blue

Well I could no longer live with the scratches and fading paint and of course the transom being a different blue than the rest of the boat. So, as the weather has been great and sunny and hot I ran out of excuses. Today peeled the numbers off and got out the mineral spirits and cleaned up all of the sticky stuff. Then sanded all of the paint with a 100 grit sanding sponge. Followed by cleaning with water only to remove the dust and then a final wipe with mineral spirits. This was followed by priming all surfaces with Interlux PreKote. Love this stuff it brushes on smooth. A little challenging keeping a wet edge in today's heat. Here is a photo of the final results after priming.

Hopefully get some color on her tomorrow. Going with the Largo Blue.