Nautique Project

Whew, It's finally finished. I started this project a long time ago and am done with most of it. We had to replace the stringers and the floor. I went back with XL (thanks, Tige) and made it a four stringer system instead of just two. We painted the stringers with gelcoat and replaced the foam, we rebuilt the engine (had a cracked intake manifold, bad piston, messed up valves, bunch of small stuff), totally rewired the boat, welded the broken gas tank, repainted the stripe and painted the top as well with Dupont Imron (thanks for the advice, Masterpainter), reupholstered it, recarpeted it, built a new dash, painted the windshield, painted the vents, the steering colomn and the controls, painted the engine, installed new snaps around the boat (for the boat cover), installed a depth finder, new battery, tinted the windshield, and probably a hundred other things I can't remember.

Here are some pics. We still have to do a little color sanding and hand glaze it again.

Hopefully, this post will make sense. I've been doing some painting and I'm a little lightheaded.

Oops. Sorry about the double post on the pics. Man, the pic looks pretty bad. Trust me the boat looks a lot better than what the pic looks like. For some reason the picture looks all wavy here, but the picture on my hard drive is fine. Oh well, here is another pic.

Man, does anybody know how I can clean up these pics? When, I resize them enough to be able to upload them, they turn to crap and look all blurry and fuzzy.

Oh BTW, it's an 1983 Ski Nautique 2001, for those that don't know.

Very nice.

More pics are on wakeboarder.com I'm having too much hell trying to get the pics to post here.

You are a trooper to bring that jewel up from the bottom of the sea. She looks great. Good effort and you have an awesome wake to play on.

When you resize the pictures, decrease both numbers by the same percent. IE 2000x1000 cut by 50% would net 1000x500. If you go 1000x800 it will come out distorted. I'm not sure that is what you are doing wrong, but I've done it before and it worked for me.

Man that looks good, my last boat needed the same thing and I wussed out and bought new. I would have been more proud of what you have done, but then theres the time. So....how long DID that take you anyway?

Very nice! Im reall a Master Craft fan, but nice job. However you should have restored the original trailer also.

WOW, talk about a face lift. Congrats, when is the tower going on?

Great job, that thing looks brand new, do you have any pictures of the new stringers/rebuilt engine? Any "in progress pictures"?

Thanks for the compliments, guys!

I really have to thank my friends, Paul, James, and Hunter for helping me out, especially Paul. Paul and I worked on the boat every weekend and several weekdays for the last six months to finish it. Hunter and I pulled the engine last year at about this time and did the tear out of the stringers and replaced one stringer last year. It then set in the garage as I just got too busy to work on it. Paul and I started on it about Christmas and have worked on it steadily ever since. James rebuilt the motor and had a friend at Rehrer-Morrison to do the machine work. He also painted the top. The only thing me or one of my friends didn't do was the machining and the upholstery. Everything else we did ourselves, just learning along the way. We could do one A LOT faster now. One of our main problems was finding materials and parts.

I have only a couple of in progress pics. That is one of the things I really regret. Neither one of us has a digital camera and would always forget to borrow one. The pics we have is after we put the stringers in and before we put in the engine, painted the top and did a lot of the other work. I wish I had one of us putting the stringers in and one of it with just the hull.

mconly, I never had the original trailer so I couldn't restore it. Besides, this trailer is so much nicer than those old original ones. .

Bruce, I'll try and see if that works. Thanks.

Fuel, incredible job!
I might be able to help with the images.
What photo editor are you using?

I use PaintShop Pro 6.0
In the resize dialog box there is a drop
down menu called "resize type"
Choose "Bilinear resample"
This will clear up the wavey lines when
resizing.
Or email me the originals and I can
fix them for ya. (sandy@w2knews.com)

Fuel,
I see that you have speakers, so hence a stereo. I have an 81 and have wanted to put a stereo in, but have been unable to figure where to mount the head unit. Where did you mount yours?

Thanks, Sandy, I appreciate it. Maybe I will email them to you. I can't seem to get my MS Photo Editor to do it w/o it looking like crap. MAaybe it is the pics. I had a buddy take them and maybe he set the resolution too low or something. They look fine on mine until I resize them.

John, the holes were already there for the speakers and whoever had it before me put a tape deck in sideways on the right hand side of my gauges. That was one of the reasons for making the new dash. They made some crappy cutouts and I didn't like where they put the stereo. Also, I wanted to hide all of those fuses that stick out on the dash. To me, it looks like somebody didn't know what a fuse block was. Some people like it because it is easy to change a fuse, put I don't care for the looks, personally. I got rid of those old ugly toggle switches and got some billet aluminum ones. I like them much better. I want to mount the stereo on what I call "the Chevy bow tie thing in the middle of the dash." I'm not sure if one will fit though I will just have to see. I'm not a big stereo guy, so I need to talk to some friends that are into that kind of stuff.

Man - that makes me miss my old '80 Nautique! And that boat didn't look near this nice, even back in '92 when I sold it! Great job dude!

There's a guy on the Delta who redid his but he put a FCT and AIR graphics on the side.I wish I would have taken a pic of it.
Anyways,fixen up an older boat is a lot of hard work,but it's worth it.They have personality.
GOOD JOB!!!!!

Sweet! old school! those old boats are awesome to drive, they are rockets>

WOW!
That dash looks great.
I'm gonna have to show these pics to my brother who has an 84'. He's doing a little work on it, but nothing as spectacular as what you have done.
How about a pic of the transom?
How hard was it to install a depth finder?

What's the pouch on the back of the driver's seat for?

Gloves ;)

The pouch is basically the glove box. We usually keep sunscreen, a phillips screwdriver, and our wallets in it.

I have 300 lbs of lead and 300 lbs of 1 1/2" plate steel in the boat now. I bought 5 old school 70's suitcases for 55 cents each. You know, the old hard sided ones with the lace inside. One of them is blue and that is what we put the plate steel in. Another one is a hard blue makeup suitcase thing. That is our new tool box.

DAve, thanks for the compliment. The depth finder was pretty easy to install. We had a few problems because we were in really sandy, shallow water when we installed it and it was giving us no readings or sometimes bad readings. If you decide to install one, email me and I will give you instructions on how to do it.

Got rid of the lines using paintshop pro.
The pics are actually a pretty high res.
Thats why the get freaky when they get shrunk.
I used a bilinear resampling to clean it up.

Wow! That looks so much better! Thanks Sandy!