Tractionless

Seems the only folks who take on a resto. of this sort have a boat the holds its value such as a retired racer, Cig. Apache etc. (I'm sure there are others, not purposely excluding anyone). I'm not sure the boat you are asking about is one of those.

Keith

dereknkathy

There is another group who do this. Those who don't know better. 2000 bucks for this 40000 high perf boat? Only needs engines, drives, inter and a little wood rot! How can I pass this up?

TomZ

iTrader: (2)

Huge job, and it you don't have an "in" with someone to do it you're looking at some huge money. The 311 is one of their best if not the best of their classic boats. I've been around Formula for a long time.. even soaking wet they're still tanks, but I've not seen one that had the bottom delaminating. The bottom of the Formula 311 is solid core so the delamination is really called blistering. This is probably caused by flexing of the hull which resulted in cracks being created allowing water to get into the voids. Until it's fixed, it gets worse and worse.

The only way to tell how bad the moisture is and (ultimately) how much rot there is would be by removing the fuel tank and inspecting from there. You could also take core samples of the transom, stringers, and bulkhead to get a feel for how bad things are (or aren't).

Lastly, moisture meters are not completely accurate; they only look for water content. It's a boat. It's come into contact with water. It's going to be wet. If you really want to know the condition, have the boat examined with an infrared camera. That'll tell you what's actually there.

I know you've been searching for a long time... lots of luck!

Full Force

iTrader: (5)

For what nice 311's can be had for I would walk, that's going to turn into a 20,000+ job and more.... because when you take it apart the list will be endless of small stuff and even bigger things that need replaced, I hate that Formula uses foam...its a huge sponge, and then they did not seal drilled holes I do not know of but maybe one 311/357 that has not had hull issues from rot... I started my 32 Baja this way.. after 15,000 I stopped and bought a dry Cig no power and never looked back....