1986 Glassstream bass boat project

[Inshoremac]

Hello, I'm a long time follower of this forum and it has helped me a whole lot with other boat and repair projects in the past.

A couple of weeks ago i picked up a very abused and on its last leg 1986 Glasstream 15 foot dual console bass boat. I had to drive 2.5 hours from where i live to get it and do a bit of work to the trailer to get it road ready for the trip back, but for the price it was worth it.



The boats been sitting for at least 7 years at a little micro farm. Some of the hatches were open, and most of any usable hardware was gone. Actualy the only usable thing besides the hull and shell, was the rubrail and hand rails lol. But it was what i was looking for in a project.

Were i live, besides saltwater there are only a few fresh water lakes and they are trolling motor only. So my plans are to fix it up just for the use in those type lakes. No waves or 63 MPH for this boat.

 

[Inshoremac]

Here are some more picks that give you an idea of how rough some parts of the boat are.

Boat New first day

 

[Inshoremac]

My plans are to sand the gel coat down as close to bare glass as i can in the areas im going to keep, cut out the consoles main floor and front deck. Replace flooring and glass back in, rebuild front deck area and get rid of front livewell, build side storage compartments, extend back casting deck and add storage were the seat areas are, repair transom, prime paint and add carpet and electronics.... in a nut shell.

 

[gm280]

:welcome: to iboats Inshoremac. Always great to have a new member...

I will start be saying I used to own a Glasstream much like that. It was amazingly fast as well. You do have your work cut out for you with this one though. You can instantly figure on replacing the transom, floor, and stringers even before decaping it. That is a giving, especially for that hull. Those boats were built in Georgia decades ago and were not hand laid hulls but chopper-gun hulls. That means they would roll or spray on some polyester resin and then shoot chopped fiberglass material into the resin. Then it would get rolled into the poly resin. So the hull isn't a super high end quality built boat. But it can be made to run again with a lot of work.

The trailer looks nice and I'm sure will need a rework effort as well. But I think you already knew most of this stuff. I would suggest the very first thing to do is take ton of pictures from every angle you could possible think of inside and out. And then take measurements as well so when you do decap it, it will not splay out and the cap never fit back on again. So you will have to build some type cradle of supports to control that issue as well. I like drawing a sketch and plotting the hull measurements on that sketch to make certain the hull stays in place along the way.

I would like to follow along with this project as it goes forward, if that is okay with you. :noidea:

I have some attachments with this style boat.

 

[Inshoremac]

gm280, thank you. Yes many of the things you mentioned will need to be done for sure, since this boat will only be a calm water electric trolling motor only boat there are some things that im not gonna worry about doing. The repairs im going to do will not require the cap to come off, as im gonna cut out sections and try to leave as much original cap structure intacked as i can. Really probably a very unorthodoxed way of going about it lol. I will probably make more sense as i go along. It should be interesting....

 

[Inshoremac]

Clean up and removal

 

[Inshoremac]

Anyones missing some lures? These were under the floorboards and carpet lol.






Digging out some of the rotted wood and glass laminate, surprisingly the stringer structure looks good so far and sound solid.



Yuk!!



After 4 days to dry out some, a little cleaner almost ready for the garage.

 

[gm280]

Okay I understand. WOW, that is a high performance type boat for a trolling motor only setup.

I like the Beverages Are Allow plate they used to repair iffy fiberglass flooring. And that chartreuse large bill deep diving plug is still good. Clean it up and replace the treble hooks and go fishing. JMHO

 

[Inshoremac]

Yes there were a few things that made me chuckle about this boat lol. Im trying to get my progress on it up to date as im a little ahead of my post. Ive only been ablt to work on it here and there, but its in the garage now so i dont have to worry about more water. This thing was soaked!

 

[Inshoremac]

Starting to sand. I started with 1/4 sheet 60 grit paper as i thought that would be abrasive enough but it wasn't so i tried 40 grit and that seemed to do the trick. But its lots and lots of sanding.











Cutting out the front deck

 

[Woodonglass]

This might be of interest to you...Fabricating Decks, Stringers, and Transoms

 

[gm280]

Inshoreman, do you know which model Glasstream boat that is? It looks like the HrdroBass hull, but I don't remember them making a dual console setup. They also made a Bass Pro 1550 series. It was a step down form the HydroBass but still with very nice lines.

 

[Inshoremac]

Im not exactly sure. Ive seen some pictures of the mid eithies Glasstreams and i want to say its the Hydrobass also. But ive also seen the one they call bass pro and other than only having one console they seen very similar. So im not real sure but would also really like to know too. The dual console must be kinda rare maybe. Its also pretty much exactly 15'

 

[Woodonglass]

This link as well...Paint Your Boat with Tractor Paint...Say What!!!

 

[Inshoremac]

These are some pictures of other dual consoles like mine.

 

[Dlp78]

Nice thread so far, I like the pics. I would like to say that my boat also started as just a replace the main deck [soft spot and hole under side console] and clean it up and paint deal but after removing the motor I just started finding more and more so I popped the top and my stringers at first glance looked as solid and as good as could be but I reluctantly drilled some test holes and found good and bad. There are two stringers in there that tie into the transom so if it is shot a good portion of them is also, and then there is the main deck, there are three other cross braces or stringers the run opposite of the others that you can probably see in the pics for my resto, those are what the main deck was fastend too and that is where I found more rot in them and the stringers it was attached to beneath that, I get what you are saying you plan to do with boat though so it may be ok I just thought I would give you abit of a heads up though since our two boats are so similar. Popping the cap isn't really that bad or hard if you decide to and I could probably give you a good idea of how to do it if you need any help.

 

[Inshoremac]

Main deck and consoles removed. Was able to cut them out with just the skill saw and hand saw. This is probably the worst part of this project i hope lol.

 

[Inshoremac]

Does anyone have a suggestion on the best way to grind down fiberglass. I intentionaly left some high spots when i cut the consoles out. Also does anyone know what the finished thickness of 1.5 oz CSM is?

 

[Inshoremac]

Dlp78. Yes i can see what you mean now that most of the stringers are exposed. Man... some of that is a shoddy glassing job. You can see spots were the roving wasn't wet down enough. I thought about cutting out the cross sections as they are high spots, but really all i need to donis grind down the adhesive or resin the globed on the top of them and make them flush. There alot of things they did that contributed to the floor rotting, like putting the laminated plywood floor over some of the side carpet. Acts like a moisture wick. But i really liked when they cut the round hole for the drain and drilled straight down into the main stringer.

When i put the floor back in id really like to tab it right to the hull on the inside and make it as waterproof as possible.

 

[gm280]

Inshoremac, I got some good news and no so good news for you.

First the good news; Yes you really did a great job getting things cut out so seemingly easy.

Now the not so good news; The cutting out part was by far NOT the worst job. The grinding IS the worst job you will be doing next.

Most of us used an angle grinder with either 36, 40 or 80 grit sanding disks. I used 80 grit flapper disks and I could control how fast I grinded things pretty easily. But a lot of others use 36 grit disks for faster grinding efforts. You usually need to grind out all the old fiberglass until you get to fresh glass so anything you plan on installing will adhere to the fiberglass hull correctly. Unless you plan to cover the entire hull with new fiberglass and poly resin, you only need to grind the areas that will receive any new parts you plan to reinstall.

But I will tell you, this IS going to be the worst job you are going to have to do. And you seriously need to wear a Tyvek type suit with quality eye protection and a must for a 3M 6000 series type respirator air mask. Simple dust masks are not going to get it, doing the grinding. Fiberglass dust is the most itchy, dirty, smelly, stinky, scratchy worst job you will ever do when rebuilding a fiberglass boat...period! The dust goes everywhere and the more you can cover over any exposed skin the better. Just be forewarned. JMHO