2002 SANTE resto project

[t.franscioni]

So I've been lurking around planet nautique for a couple years now gathering Intel on old school natutiques giving bad advice here and there. I grew up wakeboarding in the late 90s early 2000s. Until I graduated high school at which point the lake and wakeboarding just kinda fell by the wayside and I had to wake up from my childhood dream state and attempt collage and try and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Fast forward 10 years and I'm married with 2 kids and one summer a couple years ago we decide to rent an RV and pull my dads old 1998 Ski Sanger V210 out of storage and go to the lake. Immediately I was hooked again. Hot weather, beer, chilling in the cove, trying to wakeboard, ect. So after that trip we decided to go on Craigslist and look for a used RV and a family boat of our own. As a kid me and my buddies had always wanted to ride behind a super air nautique and always thought of that boat as the top of line, best of the best wakeboard boats. I couldn't believe how advanced and huge boats had gotten. When I saw the price tag though i quickly decided that going that route just didn't make any sense at all to me financially so I found this site and started looking for my childhood dream boat. After all my researching I decided on a 2002 team edition preferably the earlier model with the 3 way rear bench seat. Found one in AZ (I'm in CA) and agreed on a price over the phone assuming it was in good shape. Jumped in our RV and went on a road trip. Test drove the boat at the local lake there and thought everything was okay plus the hull looked to be in really good shape despite some oxidation. I didn't even realize the Vdrive was separate from the transmission. Got it home and realized the Vdrive was empty and when I filled it oil it all leaked out through the bottom gasket. So I called Walter gear who manufactured the Vdrive and asked them if they could rebuild it which they could so I pulled the floor up pulled the gas tank out and pulled the Vdrive out and shipped it off. This was when my OCD really started to set in. I saw all the oil all the rust and calcium/lime buildup on the motor mounts, tranny, engine.... I started thinking if I was getting a freshly rebuilt Vdrive why not the tranny and engine too? And some of the upholstery had been redone but didn't exactly match and I had read about Christine's marine so let's do that too... Shoot the carpet is kinda worn out, oh Christine's sells bulk carpet? Okay great I'll add that to the list. The boat didn't have a fully functioning stereo system so I knew I had to do that also. So without really giving consideration to how much this would all cost and how much time it would require to do nearly all of the grunt work myself during my free time I decided to embark on the project. Thankfully I had my dads Sanger v210 to get me by while I worked on my nautique. Well that was all 2 years ago and I still have a lot of work left but have plenty of pictures to share now so I figure this is a good time to start a resto forum thread...

[Chuck]

Let's see the pics Brosef!


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[t.franscioni]

Well,,,, I guess I should have figured out how to post pictures before I started a thread based on pictures...

[t.franscioni]

There we go... Okay wish I had more before shots but these are all I got to show the condition of everything before... not too bad really, some rust, some dust, expected from a 12 or so year old boat I suppose.

[t.franscioni]

Ill try to bring everything up to date over the next couple days.

[t.franscioni]

Disassembly pictures

[t.franscioni]

One of the first things I did after disassembling everything was press in new cutlass bearings. Just made my own tool out of thread stock, washers and nuts and used that to press out the old besrings and press in the new ones. Biggest thing here was using a thick thread stock and long handled socket wrench to get the leverage needed. Broke several thread stocks and lots of sweat laying under the boat trying to work around the prop cage.

[t.franscioni]

Also pulled out all the original stereo wiring and am going with 4 wet sounds 6.5s (probably not going to install the bow speakers) and a wet sounds 10" free air in the factory location bulkhead looking thing under the passager seat so I keep as much storage as possible by mounting it the free air configuration like the factory. Probably won't sound nearly as good but I can always switch to a box later on if I don't like it. Going to power everything with a 6 ch wet sounds amp which should provide maximum power for only 4 in boat speakers and a single sub plus I can expand and add the bow speakers if I decide to do that or maybe even add a pair of small tower speakers that will all run of one amp.

[t.franscioni]

The Christine's marine vinyl turned out very good. The fact that they can replicate the nautique logo was crucial as I tend to like factory configuration restoration projects of any kind weather it be a boat, car, airplane. The colors were just about factory replicated in fact the off white I liked better as it has just a little more Grey in it than the stock vinyls. Installation was time consuming but doable. I did the most difficult peices first like the drivers seat and bow backrest. Really happy with how it's coming out. Still have to do some seats and the rear hatches. The bow backrest I considering not cutting the speaker holes and instead cutting foam to fill them in from the back. The kids fall asleep and end up napping while we are out boating so the bow will be a great spot for them to nap plus no speakers I think looks cleaner. I can always cut them out and add speakers up there at a later time.

[t.franscioni]

The motor disassembly and rebuild has been my latest project. I took it out of the boat and did a cold leak down test. 3 of the cylinders were leaking 50+% and the other 5 were perfect. I stripped the GT-40 down to the block and heads and trucked it over to my local machinist who spec'd everything out and in the end said it was in very good shape. Super clean inside just needed a valve job which he said is common in marine engines because often they really don't get used enough to keep the valve seals and seats free of rust and build up. I had him replace all the bearings on the cam shaft and crank since we had it opened up and also put new piston rings on. Also stripped the block and heads and repainted them and put on all new felpro marine gasket kit and both crank seals. Below are pics of the disassembly and leak down.

[t.franscioni]

Here's the engine back from the machine shop.

[t.franscioni]

With engine block and heads back I started on all the external engine components. Every engine component got sandblasted and painted individually so that I could get full coverage of each part. Hopefully it will cut down on and future rust and corrosion that gets started with time. The sandblasting really cleaned up the water jackets on the exhaust manifolds and risers.

[t.franscioni]

I took all the cadmium plated parts from the motor and tranny mounts and the ECM bracket along with various engine hard wear that was corroded and had it all replated to bring it back to new condition.

[frankie]

Great job so far looking forward to more!


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[t.franscioni]

This is the before and after of the motor mounts. Sandblasted, painted, plated the various washers and rod ends and installed new rubber bushing that I got from skidim.