My New Oldie.

[rayke1938]

A few before and after photos of my new 16ft clark abalone dam boat.

 I saw this on ebay a couple of months ago and thought that there would not be much interest on it so placed a bid and to my surprise i was the new owner of this.

Been in the same family since new . The rotted floor put people off so there was very little interest.The springs were rusty on the trailer but everything else appeared ok .

 

I had a little discussion with Judy when I arrived home with it .

So after a couple of weeks I finally got the nerve to start working on it.  I cut the rear seat out to make more room and to allow some height adjustable seats to be installed.

I ripped out the old flooring and than made a fatal mistake and decided that if I made the floor a couple of inches higher it would be a lot easier to get in and out of the boat.

I had all the materials and thought that it would be a dottle to just pop rivet in the new 50mm square section that it had in the shed.

So I cut out all the box section and then found that I cannot bend down for more than 20 minutes and there was insufficient room to use my lazy tong pop rivet gun and had a lot of problems having the strength to pull the rivets using the normal size gun., ( In retrospect should have seen if I could have scrounged the loan of a pneumatic gun)

Anyhow finally got the floor and carpet in and have most of the little bits done with still some to go. I tried shooting the bow sounder through the hull but it is not satisfactory so will relocate the transducer.

I am also playing around with the axle location . With all the batteries in the central battery box there was too much weight on the tow ball so in the meantime i just moved 3 of the batteries to the transom.

Also have to tidy up the wiring and install a couple of voltmeters so I can keep an eye on the batteries.

I am pretty happy with the set up and heaps of extra room and still getting 6.5kph with 3 up.

Cheers

Ray

 

[Luvit]

I so hope I'm as motivated as you Ray to do projects like this when I retire. 

Nice job, a nice big platform for landing the cricket scores of bass.

[kmcrosby78]

Nice rig Ray - plenty of room!!  That's a lot of batteries!!  Mind if I ask what the hard hat is for?  Pelicans ....

[Cmaltby]

7 hours ago, kmcrosby78 said:

Nice rig Ray - plenty of room!!  That's a lot of batteries!!  Mind if I ask what the hard hat is for?  Pelicans ....

Hard hat is for checking shrimp traps you often bump into trees and have stray branches falling on you 

[Binder]

Raising the floor looks like it was worth it in the end though.

 

[Old Scaley]

Nice work Ray. Everything about that boat smacks of ingenuity and practicality.  I have a couple of mates who are always onto me to upgrade my tinny or add a few more shiny bits to it, but actually I am looking forward to it getting a few more bruises so I can feel like I am on a fishing boat rather than a showroom boat that you would never take up a skinny creek or over a sand bar in case you scratch it.

You are an inspiration to us all, Ray!

[Glenn S]

Nice work Ray Looking good! How long have you had your haswing for? I've had mine for about a year now and no problems as yet. touch wood! I was talking to a bloke at the ramp the other day and said his fried itself 2 days after the warrany ran out, he replaced it with another one so must of liked it.

 

Cheers, Glenn.

[Uthrax]

14 hours ago, Cmaltby said:

Hard hat is for checking shrimp traps you often bump into trees and have stray branches falling on you 

Hard hats are only meant to protect your head if you bang it against something, they don't provide much if any protection against falling objects. You might be better off with a pushbike helmet.

[rayke1938]

20 minutes ago, Uthrax said:

Hard hats are only meant to protect your head if you bang it against something, they don't provide much if any protection against falling objects. You might be better off with a pushbike helmet.

Disagree

 

 

• What is a certified hard hat?

  A hard hat is a protective helmet approved for use in a workplace to protect the head from injury by falling objects, impact with other objects, debris, bad weather and electric shock.

  A hard hat is equipped with internal webbing that spreads the weight of the helmet (and therefore the shock of impact) evenly over the entire area of the helmet and top of the head. The internal harness also provides a 30 mm "buffer zone" between the shell and the head that will reduce the likelihood of impact from a falling object being transferred to the skull.

  Features of hard hats can include a choice of shapes, ventilation, colours, adjustments and accessories.

Rather be wearing a hard hat than a pushie bit of plastic which is primarily designed to protect your head in a fall and not from falling objects.

Certified hard hats also have a use by date dont know about pushie helmets.

Cheers

Ray

[rayke1938]

8 hours ago, Glenn S said:

Nice work Ray Looking good! How long have you had your haswing for?

 

Cheers, Glenn.

Only had it for a month. Quite impressed with some of the design features such as the safety lanyard and foolproof tilt mechanism. Only downside is that it is a lot noisier than the Kota.

Not certain why? Maybe it is the brushless motor;

Got heaps more grunt than the kota.

Be interesting to see how long it lasts.

I have read good reviews on other models but just had to rely on factory blurb on the protuar so it is a bit of a gamble but I wanted a bit more grunt for the new boat,

[Glenn S]

Yep, i have nothing bad to say about my one, top speed with me standing at the front to push the nose down is just over 8kph so i'm pretty happy with that. Yep they are noisey alright but all electric motors that i have seen over 2hp have all been noisey. Those expensive torqeedos - you here them coming from a mile away! Would love a 5hp parson but then you have the battery weight for 48volt system. plus batteries for sounder and front electric. I think i would have to strengthen my trailer and boat for that. might just stick with the haswing!

 

Cheers, Glenn.

[STKE]

Great find ray, they don't make them like they used too. 

My clarke is the same as you'res although a little modified, they do make em tough