evantwheeler

Thank you for the reply guys. I've reached out to a couple of prop shops (Cutting Edge & BBlades), hoping they can get me hooked me up with something that performs as I desire. I will certainly update this thread with the progress.

This past weekend, I tore out the rear bench and removed the engine hatch. The engine hatch had a pretty good bow in it and I am going to rebuild it so that it lays flat. The rear bench had some pretty good rot in it. It will be rebuilt with new wood and I'll probably glass it to keep it protected from water. Thinking about building a couple of sub boxes into the outside of the seat, but not 100% sure on that yet. I've read that the best placement for the subs is in the mid-cabin, and I have TONS of space there so that will probably be the direction I go. I like the idea of under the bench because they are out of eye sight and hard to steal...

While everything is apart, I plan to purchase and install a new throttle/drive control made by Hardin marine. These units are soooo clean looking, and from what I've read, make driving the boat a lot better experience. I've always hated the dual controls in every boat I've driven, so I'm excited to learn and use these off-shore style controls. It's an expensive upgrade, but everyone that does it says its worth the money so I'm just going to bite the bullet. I'll probably put new cables in while I'm at it. http://www.hardin-marine.com/p-74408...e-control.aspx

I'm also going to be putting in a new starter and a new alternator while everything is easily accessible. Does anyone have any recommendation for a higher amp output alternator? The stock one is only 55amps. I plan to put about 1500-2000 watts worth of amps in the boat, so I would like to upgrade the alternator to handle charging duties.

Disclaimer - picture was taken BEFORE cleaning!

obnoxus

Congrats,,,,now time for the little touches that make it your own

evantwheeler

Exactly! I'm pretty excited to make it my own and enjoy the heck out of it.

Wasted Income

I think the name is hilarious. I got a good laugh out of it. Congrats on your new hobby/obsession.

evantwheeler

Thanks. To give you a visual for the difference between the two boats and the inspiration for the name, here is Penny Dropper:



And here is Panty Dropper:

TBAG

Pics aren't showing up, love to see your work on the hatch and bench.

evantwheeler

Time for some updates. I spent a few weeks researching and reading up on stereos and made a game plan and ordered a bunch of stuff. I had a difficult time making decisions because there are just so many damn options and I don't have a baseline other than the crappy head unit powered 6x9's that were in the boat. What I did know is that bringing the speakers up into the gunnels was a must, they had to be amped, and I wanted some bass.

Here's what I ended up with. I bought a Clarion EQ that will allow me to utilize my stock head unit to play the radio and CD's, though I don't personally even own a CD. I bought an Exile audio 4.0 Bluetooth receiver that will plug into the auxillary input of the EQ that will allow me to link any phone on board to the audio system.

For speakers, I went with Powerbass XL-82ss coaxial marine speakers for the rears, and 3XL 6.5" coaxials for the front. i had purchased 5.25" speakers for the front in case the 6.5's were too big, but the 6.5's fit so I'll be sending the smaller speakers back. These speakers will be powered by a PPI Phantom 900.4 amp. This amp leaves me a ton of room to add more speakers down the road. For subs I went with a pair of Kicker Comp VR12's and will build a box for each sub that will go under the dash on each side of the boat. These will be wired to 1ohm and will be powered by PPI Phantom 1000.1 mono amp. I'll be buying a couple of deep cycle batteries at Napa to power the system as our company gets a seriously awesome discount on Napa purchases.

At this point, I've only installed the coax's and mocked up my sub boxes in cardboard.

Pics:

evantwheeler

One of the things I hated about the boat was the control. It sucked. I looked at replacing with a newer mercruiser unit, but the price was quite a bit higher than I expected. So.....this doesn't follow along with the theme of the boat as I dropped more than a few pennies on this beauty, but I ponied up for the Dana Marine billet side mount control. This thing is rad. Easy to install and looks *****en. Got the polished handles and black mounting plate. I upgraded my cables to the teleflex extreme cables CCX-189 series, which did not require any adapters at the engine side and hooked right up at the control side no issues.

evantwheeler

Another thing I did not like was the dash. Only 50% of my switches worked and they were ugly. The gauges had some type of nasty black goo around the edge of the bezel that needed cleaning, and I had some ideas for upgrading the looks of everything.

The first thing I did was install a tilt helm. When standing, I could not reach the steering wheel without crouching a bit and I didn't like that. I found a new tilt helm and tilt mechanism on Ebay for around $100 to my door. Mounting pattern for the new helm was just slightly different so I had to drill some new holes which wasn't a big deal. The helm works with my existing steering cable, which I really should replace, but I don't want to dig into at this point in time. That will come next winter when I have a little more time to have the boat down & out. One thing that I didn't anticipate was that the tilt mechanism brought the wheel towards me a couple of inches making my stock steering wheel a bit uncomfortable. I think it had a 3.5" dish or so, so I went out in search of something shallower. I found a Grant that I really liked on Summit racing so I got a new wheel, which really helped to upgrade the look of the cockpit area.









I bought a set of new switches from New Wire Marine. Only place to buy your carling style rockers. Awesome selection of boat labeled rocker covers and their shipping was incredibly fast. Jimmy Johns fast! My only gripe is that they don't offer the covers with any other color than red, which I will certainly live with but would have preferred to have the option of blue. Oh well. I ordered up some 1/8" ABS sheet off of amazon and started playing with designs in Autocad. Came up with a couple of options and played around and decided on a layout and started cutting. I will say that if i was to do it again, I would have went with 1/4" ABS. The 1/8" is just too flimsy. It works, but when I push a button it flexes the plate an 1/8" or so.

I printed out a scale layout of the switches with a 1/16" hole at each corner. I center punched each hole. Then I scored between the edges of the holes to give my cut line. I used a Rotozip with an 1/8" bit to cut all of the holes and it turned out way better than I expected. I had contemplated sending New Wire Marine my layout and having them CNC router the plates, but I wanted to be able to change my layout down the road if I changed my mind or upgraded something, so I figured it would be better to learn how, and spend the money on the tool as opposed to paying someones labor to build me something. I'm glad I did.

evantwheeler

The finishing touch for the dash was to wrap all of the panels. I bought some glossy carbon fiber vinyl off of Amazon and gave it a try. It doesn't look professional up close, some of my edges puckered, but for now it will suffice. I think the carbon fiber looks great with the rest of the black touches with the speakers and the black mounting plate of the shifter. I would love to upgrade my gauges, but they all work so I don't really have a great reason to upgrade other than aesthetics.

Before:








After:









I've got one final finishing touch that is in the mail that will just set off the cockpit