Rusty boats and rustier trailers

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
what size engines

Seamaster 534 ci...

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limblips

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
I've got a soft spot for vintage boats but have given up owning wood ones...too much work to maintain.
I had an old Thompson runabout that I salvaged from the rafters in a barn. I learned a lot from that boat. The biggest lesson was you can either enjoy riding in boats or you can enjoy working on boats but you can't do both if you own a wooden boat! I am now doing '50s aluminum runabouts. I have a 1958 Lonestar and a ~1956 Duracraft. Looking for a 13 foot Feathercraft. There was a guy down Drayden way that had one but he wouldn't give it up.

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Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
Meh - some people have cars rusting away. Still your boat is really cool though - does it still need a lot of work?

Oh yeah. We have not dug in to the water supply system..the AC units...the heaters... The aft deck is shot and needs replacing. The generator has not been run in probably 20 years. The Lectra San isn't installed right now..it's in boxes, apart. So no functioning heads at the moment. The hot water heater looks so ancient that I'm not even going to try it out...it's just getting replaced. The starboard main engine is dead...I have acquired a spare engine from an estate sale in Texas, but swapping one of those beasts is a big job.

But it sure is pretty inside...so my son will be able to move aboard soon after we get her here.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
Late 50's twin turbo Ford big block industrial engine... big on torque and long life span....
They kept producing those all the way to 1980 though...an amazing production run for any engine. They were known to go 500,000 miles in over the road trucks pretty routinely.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
I had an old Thompson runabout that I salvaged from the rafters in a barn. I learned a lot from that boat. The biggest lesson was you can either enjoy riding in boats or you can enjoy working on boats but you can't do both if you own a wooden boat! I am now doing '50s aluminum runabouts. I have a 1958 Lonestar and a ~1956 Duracraft. Looking for a 13 foot Feathercraft. There was a guy down Drayden way that had one but he wouldn't give it up.

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My '53 Special Sportsman...I loved that thing. I swapped the engine out for a 1958 Chevy 283 "power pack" engine...4-barrel ..230HP I believe it was.
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black dog

Free America
Ford 534 Super Duty truck engine.
Wasent that whole series used in heavy equipment and a host of other industrial/power unit and so on?

I kinna remember seeing a few of them as power units and clutches on some of the percussion drill rigs I looked at long ago...
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
Wasent that whole series used in heavy equipment and a host of other industrial/power unit and so on?

I kinna remember seeing a few of them as power units and clutches on some of the percussion drill rigs I looked at long ago...

A lot of them were in F-series big trucks and the cab-over tractors, but the largest market still "active" and on the 534 forums are the folks with various fire trucks, many still in service in rural VFDs.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
seized from sitting ?

Nope. Was "running when parked", but reportedly smoking like a coal-fired freight train. After a compression test and bore scope....found a nice half-dollar sized hole in top of one piston. Fortunately, the "spare" engine I bought from Texas is the same rotation as the one with the bad pistons.
 
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