1963 Biesemeyer 4 Point Hydro
 

Not an offshore boat by a long shot but thought some may be interested.
A little project we picked up for Resurrection Marine.com out of a little town in Pennsylvania. Been sitting in the weeds for decades. Pretty much everything has to be rebuilt or replaced. Should be done in a couple months. Already made some progress just waiting on spring to get the build going. Until then all the preliminary work will be done.
An easy way of keeping everyone updated for us is just to make a video. And even though they all kind of look the same as each one is posted progress will have been made.
So give it a watch and tell us what you think.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rInyErAb94E&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

i think it is a cool project,but i always liked the small boats.

Fuc&%#$ Sweet!!! :eek:

The engine was from an old genset, yes? That's pretty cool.

Ya, it was a backup generator for a A.M. Radio station. A 1994, 7.4 motor, with a little over 300 hours on it, all ran on natural gas, and governed at 1800 rpm's. Basically if you do the math it's about 20,000 miles on a 18-year-old motor.
Complete ground-up rebuild with a few added upgrades, plus a B/W 1 to 1 transmission and then made it all work in the boat.

Thanks folks.

f_inawesome ! :drink:

Sweet!
SRV :D

speechless

Thank you for posting this, and you're in the right place. I started my sleekcraft build at SNF, but those guys are basically only into outboards and knew/contributed nothing to working on a i/o. This is the right forum for this stuff, and I LOVE THAT BOAT. Would be awesome to get it near Madison, WI sometime for a photoshoot with the sleek.

In the late 50's my boss had a Biesemeyer but as I remember it was an outboard. Neat little boat. I think he said it was built by 2 brothers in Arizona.(not positive about that---getting old and memory fading)LOL
Jay

OSO= Offshoreonly
SnF= Scream and Fly
And you were an ass to the people on SnF

I had a disagreement with the moderators there, and they treated me poorly, so I did the same.

Wow a 454 in that little hydro.

Wannabe

It's gonna be fast :eek: and I gotta believe that boat is going to run pretty loose at speed yeah? No matter, freakin sweet resto!

I saw this over on the v-drive forum when you got it. cool boat. I have a 18 ft Wesco that I am putting together now. it has a 13:1 454 with dual four tunnel ram and zoomies. remember "its not how fast you go, its how good you look when you go fast".

Or like we say at ResurrectionMarine.com,
It's Not About Being Noticed, It's About Being Remembered. :drink:

Mark,
I'm just about done the Sidewinder, if you want to stop by and have a look if you need ideas for the cockpit, or just to look. As we have talked before it's all about the old school.

Tom
Cobe marine

Indeed. I don't care if the fancy new 100k+ boats are faster than mine at my lake. I look way effing cooler. :)

Yeah, like I looked great up until the crash!!!!

:lolhit:

How did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?

hey, No Guts, No Glory!

of course now days it is more 'the older I get the faster I was'

thats why I focus on looking cool, or at least trying to

hey, No Guts, No Glory!

of course now days it is more 'the older I get the faster I was'

thats why I focus on looking cool, or at least trying to

Hey Tom, I'll have to get up there and take a look at this thing. Seems like I'm there a lot (at Cobe) but always run in the Joe.

Thanks everyone for your comments. This is the reason why we do what we do. So many lost and forgotten boats sitting around just waiting on someone to come and rescue them. All that history on the verge of being lost. Today's boats may be much flashier and have everything in them including the kitchen sink but there's just something about having a earlier, simple single function and very cool boat. A boat that you're not able to go down to the local dealership and buy anymore. Ours may not be the fastest, may not be the flashiest but like our motto says, it's not about being noticed, it's about being remembered.
The first criteria of being one of our restorations, when we first see it the first words that come to mind has to be, "what a cool boat" no matter what conditions it's in.

I agree. I go on ebay from time to time just to see some of the cool old boats out there. I restore old cars and boats and they definatly had more style in years past. now days it is hard to tell anything apart at a distance.

I'm always scanning ebay, craigs list, penny saver just looking for that boat that is just too cool to let rot. I'm constantly in trouble with the g/f for too many.

At least you have a big building at work to hide yours in. :drink:

If it would rain too much more I could test run them inside.

I was thinking about that.
Make that side a giant indoor pool. Get a couple RC boats and teach boat handling as a side business. When it rains we could teach fowl whether handling. LOL
Seriously though I would give my right nut for that building.

We prefer cash.

I wish I had it to make an offer. It would be a dream come true.

Just another winter time quick update. I wish more was going on but for now it has to be everything we can do inside.
Being that we are not building a super special highly chrome big block beast with tons of bling bling we did decide to dress the motor a little bit. So we used the same color that is going on the deck to highlight some accent stripes on the valve covers. And to top it off we took the Merc plastic carb cover, stripped all the decals off, repainted and then did the same accent stripes on it. Then it dawned on us that it would be subjected to 50 to 60 mile an hour winds so we had to reinforced the underside with some half-inch thick plastic. You can probably pick the motor up with it now.
With the motor pretty much done we are moving on to anything we can get our hands on. Even if it means just painting and prepping it for future install. One was the fuel system, being that the new gas tanks have top feeds instead of bottom feeding tanks that were originally in the boat we had to change some of the fuel system around. So now both tanks will feed the fuel filter with cutoffs so you can isolate one tank from the other. Also adding a switch under the fuel gauge that will allow you to use one gauge for two tanks.
Along with that the paint is also in, we are hoping the colors that we chose will give a classic and not an old look. Parts to complete the exhaust and anything else that needs to be bought should be in the shop by now. We hate to do it but we are keeping the 3 inch exhaust tips being that four inch will not fit on the transom. We did at least polished them (they are aluminum) and they didnt turn out to bad. So it will be 4 inch all the way back until it reaches the three reducers just before the tips. Shouldn't hurt performance any being the motor is not a super performer anyway. Also picked up Ron Hill left-hand prop so we won't have to flip the motor around. Wish props were this cheap for our other boats. For what we paid for them we could've bought three for this boat. We know we don't have a baseline yet but we know what was on it and took a best guess at it anyway. What the hell they're cheap enough to do.
We then spent a few days building the one and only seat in the boat. After thinking about it a it turns out to be an expensive seat. We have leftovers but that will only benefit the next boat if we use it on it. But it didn't turn out too bad afterall.
From there we are working on what connects the motor to the V Drive and the V Drive itself. The drive shaft should be completed today. Almost all of it is new but the tube was too long so it's being cut down a rebalance. Next comes the V Drive and on from there.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygwH-yFd-aM&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBE]

Wait why are you only putting one seat in it? It needs at least 2.

One big bench seat. No room in back for a seat by the motor unless you want to be burned or banged against it. Just one like the other boat in the video.

I guess it's time for a bit of an update. Things are not going as fast as I would like but being February I really can't expect much.
After wrapping up most of the upholstery there wasn't a whole lot more that we could do until the weather will break a little. Blistering cold makes no fun out of the simplest tasks if you can do them at all. So we went back to doing what winter is for, anything we can get done in the garage. We pulled what pieces we needed off the boat and the rest would have to wait.
During this time we are also filling what was left on the big list so to be sure that we have everything waiting and ready to go when needed. Just one or two more little things are left so I think we will be good.
We made an attempt at polishing out the aluminum exhaust tips. It would've been much simpler just to replace them but they are kind of one-of-a-kind and fit the boat perfectly. After way too many hours they came out pretty nice. Maybe not "new" but for being almost 50 years old they look pretty damn good.
We also took some of this time to tighten up what was left on the motor. Had most of the drive shaft left over from the race boat build so we ordered a few pieces that were missing plus new U joints and had the shaft cut down to as small as possible and rebalanced. Along with a new power takeoff we are pretty much done all the way back to the V drive.
As for the V Drive, It was completely disassembled and cleaned, checked and re-checked. Move the fill cup and the drain plug to the motor side so you can get to them without taking the back of the seat out. New paint and then reassembled it with all new gaskets.
Then still being in a bearing mood (and still cold out) we attack the trailer wheels. Everything was completely disassembled. Bearings were soaked, cleaned, soaked again and then re-cleaned. All the old grease was removed from the hubs and they were also soaked clean. We then repacked everything including the hubs with the proper grease then reassembled it all. They now both spin smooth as glass. And just to keep it that way we added a set of buddy bearings.
Then we cut down the new fenders to fit and got those installed. To finish it all off we installed a set of 175/65 R 15's. A little more the proper profile compared to the truck tires that were on it before. The chrome rims were not salvageable so we painted them black and added some new chromed lug nuts. We are still little undecided on whether to add chrome trim rings to the rims. Maybe???
Today we had another one of those freak warm days and not let it slip by I picked up the wood for the stringers and decks and a couple 16 foot long planks for the bunks of the trailer. We then realized that we were nowhere near ready for wood yet. It didn't look like much but there was still a lot of things to be taken apart so we spent most of today getting 50-year-old bolts out without breaking anything. It was pretty surprising on how little that we actually had to cut out. For the most part it was just soaking them with penetrating lube and use a breaker bar. But all in all it came apart pretty easy compared to some of the saltwater boats I've dealt with in the past.
I also did come across the first super bonehead thing done this boat. When they installed the trim tabs, or whatever they called those bent pieces of aluminum on the transom, they covered over one of the hull drains and other holes. They did use little extra caulk around it. They also used large machine screws with bolts on the inside to hold the tabs on. For two of these large screws per tab, when they drilled the holes in the wrong place and ran into the stringers so they just screwed in the machine screws with a little extra caulk. Now that will hold it.lol
At least now the boat is actually stripped. All the wiring is gone, steering, cables, whip strut, prop shaft, rudder, gas tanks (one had about 5lbs of rust in it), etc, etc. Everything but a couple gauge that's left in the dash to play with to see different looks. Now it's ready for wood. Or at least now it's ready to get ready for wood.
On a side note, I did find out that the boat has been white, light aqua blue, pea green and dark metallic blue before it was red and white.
Come on spring.
Mark

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-c0-apv95c&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBE]

I feel your pain. I have been building my Wesco V-drive for slightly more than forever. close to finishing the inside and clearing the wood and the outside is almost ready for paint. starting to assemble the engine now. it is a 13:1 454 with tunnel ram, solid roller cam and zoomies. one more eternity and it should all be done.

13:1? your allways gonna run race gas? sounds expensive :)

in a 18' flatbottom you dont go very far, just short distances really fast. the boat only holds 24 gals total and is really light so high test and octaine booster if all else fails and they do ok. plus with the zoomies I cant do too much running or the man with the blue light bar will come and yell at me.

Ya, even though I have wet exhaust and two 13gal tanks I wont be doing any poker runs with this one.

is the bench seat even big enough to poker?

It's 6' wide. May have to put your feet over the gunnel's. :lolhit:

That's funny chit right there!!! :evilb:

amazing how fast a thread takes a downward spiral:stooges: