My little Malibu mods.

[Fisher_dude]

I was going to post this in the winter mods thread but its not really winter any more so I figured what the hell, and start a new thread. I had put out a general plee for some information regarding a good coating for boat floors and ended up going with a grey textured Deckote. It turned out pretty good I must say although I think I went a little heavy on the texture though. Lets start from the beginning. This has been a 2 year transformation that my dad and I have been busy with and its almost finished.

My dad had originally purchased an older boat but ended up blowing up the OMC leg and said the hell with that and bought this one. The boat started out as a typical bowrider with a suntanning platform at the back. The only thing it really had going for itself was that the previous owner had a full stand up canvas made for it. Im 6'3" and still have some headroom which is nice! Its got an oil injected 2-stroke Mercury 135 thats super clean. This boat hauls some serious butt being 18ft.

It lacked some room in the back so first thing was to take out the rear bench and tanning platform.

In the process, we had also picked up a couple of canon down riggers and mounted them to the back with a couple of aluminium plates. Those ended up getting switched out with some new Scottys as time went by.

 

[Fisher_dude]

My dad then got this great little kicker that replaced the old 2-stroke Evinrude.

Action shot out on the lake

We then got tired of steering from the back and devised this contraption which we are still using to this day.

 

[Fisher_dude]

My dad loves to tinker so he designed and built the back to close everything off.

The carpet was getting on our nerves so my dad fit in this interlocking floor. Super nice to walk on but ended up becoming a pain in the butt to clean out.

Our first trip out onto Kalamalka lake netted me my first laker down at 112ft with a green flasher/ green and white coyote spoon.

I picked up a HDS5X unit from a member on here and it worked great. When we marked fish like this, out come the buzzbombs,butterfly jigs and large tube jigs and we became pretty efficient at jigging for lakers. Much more fun then trolling! My dad seems to catch way more than me this way. Im always trying new things and he sticks to the trusty white wide buzzbombs. Ive become great at netting fish. haha.

 

[Fisher_dude]

Another action shot.

The wife and I were out enjoying a nice evening fish on Okanagan last May when we hit this double header while bucktailing just south of the bridge.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago when I decide to give the boat a good cleaning and found something a little disturbing.

 

[Fisher_dude]

The tank access hatch had rotted away from its foundations. Water had saturated the carpet in a few places and had gotten down into the lid supports and completely rotted them away. My dad had a piece of wood on the floor cause the tank would "pop" every now an again when it was hot out so it never got noticed until i took it off.

At the same time this was taking place, I also noticed the carpet was peeling away from the hull in a few places. Thats when I said, Screw it and peeled it all out.

No more carpet and the tank out cleaning everything up from the rot.

Malibu kinda **** the bed when designing the floor i think and instead of fibre-glassing the whole floor and filling in the huge indents, they just used foam and what appears to be a bondo like substance, to fill everything in.

 

[Fisher_dude]

I ended up peeling all the foam out, sanding the whole deck and sides and then made up some "peanutbutter" with resin, 1/4 chopped strand glass particles, and some thickener and slopped it into the indents. I ended up using 2 litres of this stuff to fill in indents in the floor to make everything smooth.

After all the sanding and fibreglass work, it was time to tackle the tank cover. We grabbed some 1/2 plywood and went to work. Cut out all the rot and fitted new supports to the stringers instead of the floor how malibu had it designed. Also reinforced the front of the tank/back of the ski-locker. We used solid oak that had been treated as all our new supports. Pre-drilled everything and used treated screws as well as a dab of silicone on each screw just to make sure everything was sealed nicely. The tops of the foamed in bulkheads on the side of the hull were also open to water saturation so we pretty much did the same to them as we did with the floor except we PL glued the crap out of them and then sealed them with silicone.

I regret to say that i didnt take any pictures of me fibreglassing the floor in. I used 2 layers of chopped strand mat and then sanded everything down with an orbital sander with 40grit and then fine sanded everything with a "mouse" type hand sander with 120 grit. At this point, the whole floor had been sanded smooth and then cleaned off. Bring on the deckote! One layer of primer, followed by a heavy layer of texture and then a layer of the grey paint got me to this point.

You can kind of see the outline of the tank. We wanted to keep it that way just in case it ever had to be removed for some reason. After letting everything cure for a few days, I installed the new side panels that my dad and I had made and then the seats.

 

[Fisher_dude]

Also installed the new scotty side mounts as we were sick and tired of leaning over the back as well as some ball mounts.

I also picked up a new HDS7 gen 2 and installed that up front where the old gen1 HDS5x used to be. My dad built a new rear storage compartment to cut down on the tackle box situation and that should be installed this week. Going to replace the fuel lines and add a water separator and we should be back on the water this week! thanks for checking out our build.

 

[scott craven]

Nice work, looks like that kept you guys busy for a while !

 

[JAC]

Wow looks great nice job!!! I was out on Okanagan this weekend still pretty slow water temp is 40. I picked one up on hair. Do you have a VHF in your boat

 

[Fisher_dude]

I do. Haven't talked to anyone on it though.

 

[JAC]

On the lakes around here most guys use 68 and a few use 6

 

[Fisher_dude]

I'll remember that. Maybe I'll turn it on right now and see if I can pick anyone up! I just finished the whole fuel line system so she's water worthy!

 

[Fisher_dude]

Dad dropped by today and dropped these off. We were debating on the best way to keep our rods while out fishing and after seeing the other thread about storing rods on small boats, it was a no brainer. They only had 4 launchers so the other 2 will come later. Time to install these!

 

[Money Well Spent]

I feel obligated to thank my son for doing all the glass and floor work....that **** is so itchy....thanks Matt....back panels are now done and varnish is drying...install tomorrow...fish kal on Friday rain or shine.
Lakers beware...the goal this year is 30 plus

 

[JAC]

Will honk the horn as we go by, were heading to Shuswap lake for Friday and Saturday