coobah

Hi! I'm new over here.

We run a boat/outboard shop with my father and we usually have not much to do in the winter so we boght ourselves some trouble A Wellcraft Nova Spyder 26 from '86 (that's what is in papers but I'm not sure) I wanted to start a small build-thread about this


So, this is how it looked like when we brought it:






As You can see, the whole cabin was already stripped




This is an image after some stipping. As you can see the transom is rotten. We knew about that and it did not really scare us because (as a Yamaha & Suzuki dealer) we want to convert it for an outboard anyway:





Old rotten transom almost gone.




Unfortunately it appeared that small parts of the stringers were attacked by the water as well. We decided to remove almost everything in the engine compartment. Cut quite a large part of the stringers (lot more than rotten/wet) and replace them. This will also help us build a strong outboard bracket later on. The boat looked like that after quite a few days of a serious fight:




Time for a new transom - as we want it rock solid and ready for some serious power (just in case ) we decided to use 55mm (abot 2,16in) "waterproof ply". This is my buddy cutting it (was a hard job with a jigsaw ) :




Transom "geting hard" on it's place





And ready:




This is how we dacided to do it. On the right you see a replacement part of wood for the stringer and on the left you can also see a part of our outboard bracket. We've put and additional stringer in the middle - extra support for the bracket which is not going thru the transom like the side ones do. All 50mm ply




A shot from the back :




This is what we did since day one. Working quite long already. Pictures show mostly the "construction" job but we do a lot of cleaning, puttying, sanding and re-paint preparing jobs in the meantime. Will keep the thread updated.

Cheers,
J.

Randy Nielsen

iTrader: (4)

Lots of work, looks good. What do you have planned for the cuddy? Randy

HEDGEHOGER

How are you connecting your out board bracket to your transom?

shaun1368

Great job guys....excited to watch the progress......I've always been a fan of the nova spyder and iam a ob fanatic.....curious to see the combination.

sdg0080

wow this should be interesting.

Powerquest_Baby!!

Awesome thread! I own a Nova Spyder too! Very cool watching you restore and convert it to outboard power. Really curious how she will handle and what kind of speeds you will see...

coobah

Nobody will try to live there anyway. Some foam and some synthetic leather will be enogh, maybe a table in the middle. That's it.

Both outside "walls" of the bracket are "shot-trough" the transom to move some of the stress onto the hull. They are screwed/epoxied to the stringers and laminated to the stringers/hull later on. They are also epoxied and laminated to the transom from inside and outside. As you cold see before - we took off about 1/3in layer of outside transom GFK all around our connections to have space for new layers of fiber. The middle bracket wall doesn't go thru like the others its just screweed/epoxied/laminated to the transom. Sorry for my crappy english - understanding of what I've just wrote is hard even for me This is how it looks like in the middle of work in the inside (outside shown on previous photos) :







Now going back to the main dish... well it's been some time and a lot of work without making any photos . We made the bracket from 45mm ply and lots of glassfiber & epoxy. The bottom is made of 20mm ply. All epoxied and screwed together. We also placed some 12mm bolt screwed 5mm stainless "algle bars" on both connections between the rear wall an the side ones. Laminated everything thick. This was our bracket at the end of the day.








And... after 1st coat of gelcoat - finally at least starting to look as it should





Will try to make more pics and thread updated more often

315duramax

great job! maybe the pics make it look funny, but it looks a little bit long IMO. great idea for running it back into the stringers.

coobah

Well, we went with 70cm (27,5") of setback so we can fully tilt up almost any outboard out there. The (sh*t - how should I call it?) "rear wall of the bracket" (a "new transom"? ) is 44cm high. It is a roullette but we decided that, as a starting point, the motors will sit about 10cm (~ 4") higher than normal (anti-cavitation plate 4" higher than bottom of hull). Those things somehow defined our bracket dimensions. There will be a swim platform on top of it so hopefully it wont look so funny at the end

315duramax

sounds like yall have it planned out! ill be watching!