1980 HydroStream Vamp resto-mod

And I finally got around to making the trailer look less like a crack heads stolen bike...
No more brown and white spray paint with dirty red wheels

 

Nice!

 

Boat ran amazing this week up at the cabin! Started right up each time, but then I ran out of gas about 200 feet from the ramp. Luckily a nice guy that I had been chatting with 5 hours earlier was near by and he came and pulled us to shore.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2_jnUq3k48E

 

It is great that all the hard work you did is now paying off with some fun family time.

The boat looks fast even on the trailer.
( with the best color truck BTW - no bias naturally )

Next upgrade a low fuel light?

 

Yep, Im looking at a better fuel tank right now. I have a plastic fuel tank in there right now that I had gotten to make sure everything worked right. Im going to have a custom aluminum one made soon. It will have a electric fuel level sensor and a filler nozzle on the outside of the boat so I dont need to flip the seats out of the way to gas up each time.

Tank thats in there is 12 gallons. I can move up to a 21 gallon tank if I get a custom aluminum one. I might swap out my second 12v lead acid battery for a smaller lithium one. That battery just runs the radio and lights.

 

Found a great deal on a jack plate, hoping to go pick it up tomorrow. Its a 10 inch setback, and thats a ton for my boat, but luckily its 2 parts, so I can remove 5.5 inches of spacer off that and get me to 5.5 inches of setback. This will replace my current tilt and trim plate thats on the boat now, and I will put on the factory mercury system.
The jack plate should also let me bolt this motor up better than the clamps it currently is using.

With the jack plate I can actually adjust the height of my motor to get it at the perfect depth. Right now Its a little low in the water, but I cant raise it anymore with the clamp system the motor uses. So I can move the jack plate up a bit, and that will reduce drag on the back end of the boat to get a little higher top speed.

 

Jack plate acquired! I already took off the fixed 5 inch plate and started cleaning up the adjustable jack plate (the part I wanted) Looks like this plate lived in the river on the boat, so its pretty dirty, but its in really good shape. I only had to file down one deformed bit of aluminum, it was a spot from someone using a punch to split the plate from the boat.

 

Not ideal, but this should keep the sun off us while putting around. I need to setup a better rear mounting point for the straps, they are wrapped around the cleats.

 

ok, got the rear straps all setup. I mounted them the same as the front straps, there is a padeye mounted to the inside float pods on each side, the straps connect to those and then up to the top. I thought about putting the rear bars in, but that will just block my view if I am pulling the kids on the tube.

But here is the top stowed, I have a cover for it so it wont turn into a giant parachute on the highway. I do need to strap it down to the hull while underway though.

 

Cleaned up the new jack plate, also got the new spreader plates. I originally only had a top spreader plate, now I have both top and bottom. The will help distribute the load over a larger area to keep the bolts from crushing the transom.

 

Got the new jack plate installed today, still trying to figure out the best way to mount the motor to it though. I can use the clamp on adapter with some modifications, or I can try to bolt the motor right to the jack plate.








Here you can see I would need to modify the clamp on adapter a bit as it doesnt fit flat on the jack plate



But these bolt holes line up pretty great to bolt it on

 

Alright this should work. I used part of the clamp on adapter to make a spacer for the clamps, then I will run bolts into the trim ram mounts and the bottom mounts.

 

There we go, hydraulic cylinders installed, hoses halfway installed. Tomorrow I will mount the pump and run the lines into the hull and refill the pump with oil.
I do need to drill out the 2 lower holes for the motor to mount too, those should be pretty easy to take care of though.




Next thing I need to do is to get a new fuel tank with a fuel level sender so I can hook up my gauge.

 

Welp I have run into a problem, 2 of the hoses are about 5-6 inches too short, the 2 hoses on the opposite side of the boat from the trim pump. I can get them to fit to the pump, but they are super tight and the larger diameter one gets kinked due to the sharp angles.

I have moved the pump to the left side of the boat now (was on the right side), and will be drilling a new hole in the topside of the boat to run the hoses as the right side of the boat hole already has throttle cable, shift cable, wiring, fuel line, and steering cable, so its a bit too full of things over there.

Im hoping that having a little more space in the hole combined with moving the pump to the other side will give me a little more slack on the lines. The other option is to get a few 6 inch hard lines and just extend the hoses. Otherwise I can see if a hose shop can cut and splice in a few extra inches to the hoses I have.

 

Trim pump all mounted up, new hole drilled for the lines to come through. Eventually I will be putting a new motor on the boat that has a built in trim pump, so this hole will be converted into a fuel filler hole. But for now its for the hydraulic lines.

 

4 new hydraulic hoses should be showing up this week (today and tomorrow), they are the same length as the old hoses, but not 40 years old. I could of had 2 custom length ones made, but at $2.89 per inch and needing 72 inches, it was just too damn expensive. Making a extension is going to be way way cheaper.

 

Well this sucks... one of the fittings on the trim pump manifold pulled the threads out. So now I have brand new hoses, but the pump manifold is shot, I did find a replacement manifold on ebay, really surprised I found just the manifold too as these are not easy to find in good shape. So the new manifold should be here sometime next week, then I get to take mine apart and put on the new parts.

I might take the old manifold and see if I can get the threads fixed at a machine shop. But not holding my breath on them being able to fix it or even wanting to fix it.

 

On the plus side, it did force me to rethink my trim pump mounting location. Even with some extension, putting the pump where I put it caused too much strain on the hoses. The way the hoses are made, they pretty much have to go from the rams, straight forward then loop down to the pump. I cant go to the side as the fittings on the hose do not rotate to fit. Its kind of hard to describe, but the lines can pretty much only go one way and you need to modify the boat to fit them.

So, I am making a plate that I will mount to the floor of the boat and it will tie into the bottom of the splash well. This will put the trim pump in a good place, To put the pump here, I have to rotate my starting battery, and I will probably need to swap out my aux battery with something smaller. This all should drop the weight a fair amount from the back. Going from the heavy 50lb tilt and trim unit to the lighter weight jack plate and factory trim, and dropping the 50lbs from the aux battery. In all I should be getting rid of around 80lbs from the rear.

The new location for the pump will actually bring the hoses from the rams straight forward, then between the splashwell front bulkhead and the rear seat. Its not super pretty but for the rest of the summer it should be good. Drilling into the splashwell is not really a option to run the hoses, if I upgrade to a newer motor, those will just be open holes that I dont want.


I also need to redo my bilge pump a bit too. Its been just kinda flopping around in the back of the boat, time for me to actually mount it to something, maybe route the hose less sloppy.

 

New trim pump mounting installed and sealed up. Also rotated the starting battery to clear the pump.







This is how the hoses are going to run for now, they will just wrap over the back here.