Ballistic 7.8 refurb

[Nos4r2]

Back in December I bought a Ballistic 7.8, thinking it just needed a bit of a clean,some trailer bearings and a few odds and sods.

Anyway, it all started when the seller decided not to send the charts for the plotter along as he agreed, rendering large flush mounted black and white plotter useless.
When I stuck my head in the console and looked a little closer at what was in there it was pretty obvious it was going to need rewiring completely. The wiring was all household 2 core. Nothing was labelled, half of it only worked intermittently and there were so many mild steel screws etc in there that it looked like a tramp had been living in it.

So....

I ripped the whole boat apart and started from the beginning.

Some before photos:-

[whisper]

[tony t]

Originally Posted by whisper

Give the bloke a chance hes probably having his dinner before he post any more

[Nos4r2]

I towed the trailer up to Ambrow trailers in Christchurch for a set of bearings as the boat was stuck at Rockley Park 'til it was repaired.
Unfortunately it was so bad that when I got it there it was so bad I had no option but to get all the work on it done so it could leave the premises. However, it had Ak-lo bearings in it and it was bunked.I didn't really want it anyway, so I picked up a Rollercoaster 10.

The bill for fixing the original trailer is below...

[Nos4r2]

Originally Posted by tony t

Give the bloke a chance hes probably having his dinner before he post any more

He's heard all this first hand Tony He knows how much more is to come!

[Miller]

wasnt this one on ebay?I looked at it, thought it didnt seem a bad price

[Nos4r2]

The saga continues.

I went down to Rockley to collect it (thanks to the guys there for the help putting it on and setting up the rollers on the Rollercoaster trailer-much appreciated). When I got it up to my storage, it promptly sank up to the axles in mud. After dragging it out with a tractor I had to wait 'til the ground froze to move it to its space.


Anyway, a few months passed as the weather was too bad to start looking at it properly. The outboard hadn't been serviced for 2 years so that was the 1st thing to deal with. When I got the lower unit home to drain it, the lazy b*****d that had serviced it last had reused the old drain plug fibre washers. He hadn't even bothered to clean the sealing faces-there was sand behind the washers so water had got in. The oil wasn't very nice.

The Seastar steering was cavitating really badly as well and I couldn't see any obvious leaks so I was hoping it just needed bleeding properly. No such luck-new seals needed. I drained the system to change the fluid. There was about half a litre in there

The seat bases were so rotten that when I took the material off, the bases fell to pieces. There was actually fungus that looked like tree branches growing in one of them. (a MASSIVE thanks to Nugent here for making new bases for me!)

Anyway, the more I looked into it, the more needed doing.

[whisper]

Originally Posted by Nos4r2

Anyway, the more I looked into it, the more needed doing.

Yep I remember sitting on the tubes with you as the plot started to thicken....

[Nos4r2]

So, anyway. Lower unit in garage, draining the emulsified crap out.

The batteries were utterly dead-it looked like cockles were looking up at me when I opened them up and they wouldn't charge. They were just left loose in the boxes in the console.

The heatwave started so we got on with the rest of it. I didn't want to be removing consoles outside in the rain.

It took a while to get everything out. the in-console wiring was so bad it all had to be labelled and traced as nothing was the same colour throughout. The outboard rigging tube had been split and badly bodged back together and someone had put a jubilee clip on the fuel line that had worn through both outboard control cables.

The more we dismantled the worse it looked.

The inside of the console stank of petrol for 2 reasons. The fuel shutoff on the console had an open port on it without even being blanked off so if you turned it to one position, it emptied the fuel line from the outboard and water separator into the console.

The rest of it was due to someone 'sealing' the fuel sender by what looked like cutting the end off a tube of Sikaflex and pumping the whole tube randomly across the top of it. The '3/4 of a tank' the seller said was in it was actually under 20 litres. The sender was full of fuel and utterly dead.

The console wasn't fixed down properly at all-the whole rear flange had no screws in. The screws that were in there weren't tightened properly and the console had been moving for a long time. It had worn the diamond pattern on the deck away in one place. EVERYTHING in there was utterly disgusting.

[Nos4r2]

So, I've spent the last few days working on the console and jockey seats. The original VHF and ariel were fubar, so they had to go.
Sixy has been remaking the seats today-it took weeks to dry them out and kill the mould, but the foam and covers were ok after so we reused them. 2 done so far-they look like new.

After covering everything in Oxalic acid/wallpaper paste gel top remove the yellowing then gelcoat filler and an awful lot of elbow grease (thanks Doggypaddle and Harry for the help) the console is getting there.Stereo head unit, SH GX1600 and gauges/compass reinstalled. There's a Lowrance HDS7 going in the big hole.

I polished the glass on the Smartcraft gauges and fuel gauge with polishing compound and the scratches came out nicely.