Started a Zodiac pro 470 restauration

[Zodiacer]

Hi, new here on the forum so little introduction;

I'm from Holland and bought a 1997 Zodiac Pro 470 which i decided to restore.
Boughted as an empty boat without consoles and engine, but with a good full roller trailer fitted with big 13" wheels.



My rig on it's way home after i bought it.



My rib when i bought and on my way home.

The Zodiac is whitout consoles and engine so first was looking to complete the boat with consoles but found nothing suitable , also looked at jockeyseats but no result.
O yeah, the Zodiac has a small console in the front; an original anchorlocker which is mounted in the bow.

Because the budget is minimum decided to leave the interior empty so keep maximum deckspace.
With these facts in mind went looking for an nice engine, this also gave a few problems, the hull is still untouched and measering the sternplate gave an measerement of just 40 cm so need a shortshaft engine for this boat.
This made it difficult in Holland to search for an engine, 95% of the outboards bigger then 25hp is longshaft and 90% of those are with remotecontrol and i need a tillercontrol on the engine.

Saw several engines, some in poor state but reseanable budget or beauties costing a fortune.
At the end found an outboardspecialist who offered a very nice and tidy Mercury 40hp from 1998, it's 2 cilinder whitout oilinjection. It had remote control on it but he converts the engine to an tillerarm control, with only original Mercury parts. Hopefully the engine is ready to use next week.....

This 40hp beast is hopefully ready for installation next week,at this moment being converted to tillerarm control.


So that's the story of my rib, now this is my first rib and also got stuck on a few problems;

The Zodiac was most of the time used in France and so it has a french registrationumber painted on the hull Now thanks to this forum i know that my Zodiac Pro has PVC-tubing on it. I found in some threads here that you remove paint from tubes with aceton. Does that also count for tubes from Zodaic, so pvc-tubes??? and doesn't it effect the orginal red colour?

There is one loose patch on the tube which is poorly glued so coming of again, what product can i use to remove glue-remainings from the tube?

Thanks for the advises and happy ribbing to everyone

[sailit]

I have a boat that I be leave to be same, its a bombard 470 1996. I think they were made in the same place. If not they look very similar.

I am just getting mine going for the summer and an interested in how you rig your boat.

[Zodiacer]

@Sailit, as far as I can find out here in Europe a lot of models from Zodiac and Bombard are similar and build in the same factory in France.

For the zodiac pro 470 also known as Pro 500 and Pro 9 the Bombard Explorer 500 model should be the same, compared pics from both models and look similar.

How I'm going to rig mine Zodiac?
Well this started out as a fun buy
We also have a 17' console boat already in the water at our house and always had a sweetspot for rib's, so could buy this lovely Zodiac for a steal and now want to fix it up with small budget so buying consoles happened to be expensive and couldn't find a nice model which fit good

Then changed my idea for this rib, why not keep it clean and simple so keep it empty and do the outboard steering by tiller.
Now as you could read already I bought a Mercury 40 hp which will come with tiller.
There is also a trailer which already proofed good on the road but can use a little tlc to make it perfect.

After next week will start cleaning up the boat and mount the engine and then go testing it out

I actualy wanted to go for a slightly bigger model between 5 and 5,5 mtr but maybe in the future