SV211 Project

[GeoffW]

Took the boat out to the lake on Sunday for a rundown and everything worked as I expected. As luck would have it, the main Rockford amp that powers my interior and bow speakers quit in the middle of the day. I don't know how old this amp is as it came with the boat, but I do suspect it's 8-10 years old and it was being a little finicky last spring. After I got home, I was out in the shop and swapped amps to try and narrow down WTF went wrong and found the amp itself to power on, but have zero output.

New amp on the way and I should hopefully be able to install later this week. Luckily, it's the exact same size as the Rockford that's on the board. It does need a bit of rewiring though. Previous amp was a M600-4D, which is a 4 channel amp. 2 channels were wired as a 2 Ohm load and the bow as a 4 Ohm. I quizzed Rockford up and down that this would work and they verified it would. Decided to just do it, spend a bit more and move to a dedicated 6 channel amp.

[GeoffW]

Recieved new amp late last week and put it in Sat night. Realized that the new JL amp does not have pass through pre-outs like the Rockford's did, so back into the city to find RCA splitters. After doing this and remote level control, I wish I woul dhave just jumped in and put a new head unit in. Headunit in the boat is an original XMD3 from 2004 so I feel like it's on borrowed time.

JL M600/6 turned out to be a smaller amp than the 4 channel Rockford it replaced.

Everything's in and it took a bit to rebalance everything, but we're close. Once I get it on the water I'll rebalance as that changes things all together.

Way it sits right now...

JL M600/6 power the 4 in cabin Rockford M262's and the inbow M262's.
Rockford Prime M400-4d powers the towers which are Kicker KM8's. I Have room for one more set on this amp if I need to, buut it's not in the plans right now as we are normally at a small lake and any more volume would probably not be well recieved.
JL JX1000/1d powers a 12" Kicker L7

While it wasn't my preference, I had to use a pair of Neutrik connectors to connect the towers to the boat as the Previous owner drilled and fed wiring through the tower and I really don't like it. If I had a chance to do it again, I"d change the location where it enters and likely Tig a set of cable retainers on the tower. Feeding cables through this tower is a PITA.

[GeoffW]

I built these last year and they worked well. With the larger 540 bags in the rear lockers, I didn't want to take a chance of the dividers bowing out, so fabricated a simple set of divider braces. I was planning to buy a length of aluminum flat stock and bend my own, but while wondering at a local Lowes store last year I found some small aluminum channel on clearance. Worked well, but I don't like the short carriage bolts and nuts. I'll fab some backing washers this summer, and swap out the carriage bolts for longer ones where I could use wingnuts instead.

[GeoffW]

Few months after the last post, boat in general is running great. There is a slight hum in the audio system which I need to chase at some point. Doing a google search, seems as there these new amps are possibly a little more sensitive than the previous and are picking up some grounding noise.

I left the boat at the cabin for a few weeks so I could tackle some work on the trailer. Trailer is a single axle Ramlin. At some point, the previous owner either hit something while turning or ?? on the driver's side. The wood side steps on that side were demolished. I wanted to make sure the boat was what I wanted before spending time and money on the trailer. I started out thinking I wanted to look for a tandem trailer, but the single axle has worked for what we need and tandems are almost impossible to come by up here unless you buy new. Now that we know the boat well time to update.

Note in the pictures right at the front fender line the wood is completely split in half.

[GeoffW]

My thoughts were to only replace the wood. As I took the wood off, I found a few more issues which I either never noticed previously, or couldn't see with the wood on - namely, a number of cracked welds. The passenger side round support rod is completely cracked. The perimeter flatbar shown in the second picture in the previous post has been rewelded on. It's a bit twisted and doesn't line up well with it's original position. Looking and measuring, the front cross member is bent slightly which more and more leads me to believe they ran into something with the front cross member.

[GeoffW]

On the passenger side, here's the perimeter flat bar and how they attached it. I knew about this when I bought the boat. It didn't look nearly as gross with the plywood on. Now that I took the plywood off, I need to do something with it as I can't put things back together knowing this is here. To give some perspective, it's some sort of a bolt head, but a thin head that's about 1 1/4" in diameter and was used as a filler!

've found 5 cracks that need to be addressed relating to the front support member alone. Already ground them out and will start to reweld them back later this week. The front perimeter plate needs a backing plate cut for it to get it close to where it should be.

[GeoffW]

I took the good side of the side steps and cut the carpet all off. I bought a sheet of 3/4" fir plywood and sliced it in half. I can't make sense of this, but when Ramlin built this trailer, it appears that they've used 2 sheets of plywood, one for each side, in place of splitting on down the middle. There is a 1/4" width difference between the original fender and the one I built and the sheet I picked up measured 48 1/8".

I ended up clamping the old fender plywood on top of the new plywood. I used a routing and cut the first pass with a 1" straight bit to get close to the desired shape. I then swapped bits to a bit with a guide and followed the original shape. Took a few passes, but came out pretty nice and no measuring! Finished the top face with a radius cut to clean it up. While the shape is the same side to side, the bolt holes on either side are close,but still random. I never did like the carpet on the sides and how it too forever to dry, so I'm taking the sides down to a buddy who will Line-x the side steps for me.

[GeoffW]

I made a fair bit of progress over the past week. The side boards went to Line-x to get sprayed.

In the meantime, I pulled the carpet off of the bunks and redid all of the bunk carpeting. There was no shortage of staples used on the bunk carpet by Ramlin. It took atleast a few hours just to clean the old staples up. I was surprised to find another strip of carpet underneath the first for a second layer of protection. Carpet I had was just long enouhg, luckily the carpet stretches slightly. Bunk lumber was in great shape and the fastening hardware was alright as well.

One word of caution to those who haven't replaced bunk carpet before - wear safety glasses - there was way more sand mixed into the carpet than I ever thought would come out. As I ripped, that sand went everywhere. Protect your eyes!

[GeoffW]

Welding was completed last week. Took just as long to weld the cracks out than it did to prep things. A reminder to anyone who may have to do this - there is wiring and brake lines in the trailer frame. I took me a bit to figure out how to move them away from the welded joints so I wouldn't put too much heat to them. I ended up cutting a few pieces of 3/4" PVC pipe and notched it with holders. I could then place the pipe vertically in the frame openings, butting the wiring and brake lines to the top of the trailer frame during welding. Worked well.

Side steps came back from Line-X and I am very happy with them. The finish is perfect for this trailer and the steps are really grippy. A few notes if I were to do this again - I would spend a few more days and fill any knots or imperfections. I thought about it before taking the steps in, but figured the Line-X spray would fill any imperfections. It sets so quick, and is so thin, it didn't. Thus, there are a few holes here and there. It's not a issue, but if I were to suggest for someone else this is what I would do. Probably use wood filler or wood glue and palm sand it flush. Rest of the board didn't need really any prep.

Install went good. I oversized my bolt holes by 1/8" and that worked out well. I left two holes, where I was welding, to drill once the boards came back from Line-x. Drilling them was easy and clean. I used 1/4" Carriage bolts everywhere with lockwashers and nuts. I filled all of the holes with clear silicone to help provide a bit more water resistance in the holes I had to drill and in the case where the bolts cut through the Line-x.

I'd do this again in a heartbeat - the Line-x came out really nice!

[SilentSeven]

+1 to junk the carpet on the sideboards. Your Line-x solution looks good. On my DHM trailer, I was able to use Trex synthetic deck boards and am pretty happy with the results.

For staple removal, if you don't have one of these it's totally worth buying.... nearly required if you're doing any seat skins and super helpful for any other type of staple work.

https://www.amazon.com/Osborne-124-S...%2C234&sr=8-15

[GeoffW]

+1 to junk the carpet on the sideboards. Your Line-x solution looks good. On my DHM trailer, I was able to use Trex synthetic deck boards and am pretty happy with the results.

For staple removal, if you don't have one of these it's totally worth buying.... nearly required if you're doing any seat skins and super helpful for any other type of staple work.

https://www.amazon.com/Osborne-124-S...%2C234&sr=8-15

If you have any pictures of how the Trex worked out I'd be very curious to see! Bet it looks really good.

I have a staple tool similar that we've used for doing upholstery in the past. Started with it, but the staples were so rusted and brittle (plain steel), they sheared in half. Had to use a good pair of linesman's pliers to pull almost every staple out. Painful to say the least.

[GeoffW]

I was waiting to see on the vendors response before I posted this. Last spring I decided to swap out the tower speakers. I thought I could build something somewhat economical using a set of Rockville Enclosures off of Amazon and a set of Kicker KM8's. The kickers have worked out to be a really nice speaker. I like them alot. This is a case of I got what I paid for though. We have about 60 hours on the boat since I put the enclosures on. While looking at the enclosures the other day, I found a crack in one, in a very odd place. I work with metals on a daily basis, this is the result of either shotty aluminum or the metal working process was done poorly. The crack is about an inch long and probably could be welded up, but they've run their course with me.

I contacted the vendor, AudioSavings, and was flat out told I'm a few months past warranty, go fly a kite.

There's always a rainbow at the end of every rain storm right? As luck would have it, I ran into a absolutely great deal on another pair of towers...more to come...