FINALLY found an 84' 255 AJ to buy!

That's not cheap...and I don't like the maintenance of teak, but when teak is looking right...man, there's nothing like it!
 
Today was pretty darn productive! I removed the instrument panel because it was cracked in several places, I thought that it was a clear plexiglass cover over a metal panel. Upon removal I discovered that it is a clear plexiglass panel painted silver on the back side. I took a scrap section of plexi we had laying around the shop and used the old piece as a template to make a new one. I used the mill to cut out the instrument holes and I painted the back of the new piece black...it looks great! I'll try to get some pics but I was on a roll today.

I was trouble shooting the step down pump, I found that it was wired improperly but even after fixing it the pump would not work. I decided to remove the pump and the float switch. Well, when I removed the mounting screw for the float switch I noticed water in the bilge running into the hole...I assumed it was running into the lower bilge area, then as I was walking by the boat I noticed water dripping onto the ground in front of the boat!:wow: Someone has screwed the mounting screw all the way though the hull! Fortunately I found it now, I'll glass it from the inside, r&r a small area of gel coat and epoxy prime it for the new bottom paint... In hindsight this is kinda funny!

Also, we removed everything from the transom and resealed every old and current hole. Amazingly all the wood was bone dry!!! The platform is in okay shape, but it'll have to be replaced next winter, I had to straighten the brackets for it and re-align the support struts, it had a little play but now it's rock solid and ready for kids!

I took a break on the teak work for today...I was getting into a rut with it. Anyway, just a little update on the preparation to launch. We're shooting for May 1st.:thumbsup:
 
Wow! A screw through bottom!? Glad you caught it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Good save for sure... keep up the steady progress and you will make May 1st.
 
Thanks!

I'm looking into a new GPS/Sonar and I'm considering mounting it into the panel now that I see how easy it is to replace the main instrument panel. I like the idea of not having the unit on top of the panel in my line of sight. I'm looking at a Garmin 441S or a Lowrance HDS 5. Speaking of electronics, the old VHF antenna was shot so I'm replacing that and getting a new DSC VHF...I'm way behind the 8 ball on the electronics. DSC is pretty cool!
 
KC_Sundancer said:
First off- nice work so far. The stock pulpit should be fine for just holding the anchor in a roller if you are manually doing the anchor pulling and tying it off to a deck cleat outside of the roller when anchored. Something you should always do anyway - tying outside the roller that is. The area of the deck it is mounted to does not have a good ratio to the length of the pulpit for pulling with a windlass. I would be worried about putting too much strain on the fiberglass in that small area.
If opting for a future windlass I would consider doing something similar to what I just upgraded to. Replace the pulpit and anchor locker door with a pulpit the extends back over the locker door (picture below). I found a great resource for teak work down in Florida at a extremely reasonable prices if ever interested. The finish was done by myself.
I look forward to more pictures as you go along.


picture2.jpg
Click to expand...

Could u please give me ur contact info on the teak people n Florida? An if I may ask, how much was ur pulpit?
 
I'm looking at THESE gauges to replace the originals. I'll ditch the speedometer as it serves no purpose IMO.
 
WOW...... Where do you find the time to get so much done!!
I work 2-10 and cant get anything done during the week and unfortunately never seem to get much done over the weekends either ... lol.

Your canvas looks great! I need to get one of those cockpit covers myself. I'd probably just use it for winter storage though cause I would have to pull all my eisenglass off in order to snap it around the window frame since i have the enclosure and hardtop.

Good find on the screw through the hull. It amazes me how stupid some people are ... lol. The last owner of my boat put a stereo in the cabin and ran the wires in the compartment above the sink and screwed wire holders in to hold the wires and I had a screw coming out the side of my boat that I havent fixed yet. Just filled it with some 4200 till I get around to fixing it. But at least mine wasnt below the water line.

I definitely wouldnt put a windlass setup with the stock pulpit. If you look at it, The pulpit itself is only attaching to about 4 inches of the deck because of the anchor hatch. You could probably put in larger bolts and a backing plate to make it solid enough for a roller but i wouldnt chance it with a windlass. I did it the hard way and completely closed in the hatch opening and built a fiberglass pulpit for mine. The pulpit actually came off a 60' Trawler and I cut it down and modified it to fit. That thing is rock solid but dang it was alot of work and i doubt if i would do it again. Theres much easier ways to do it. Theres a guy on ebay that makes pulpits out of starboard and uses SS angle iron to reinforce it. You can have one made to fit your boat alot cheaper than going with teak and its maintenance free. My problem was finding a pulpit wide enough to cover the hatch area and even the one off the trawler was narrower than the amberjacks pulpit. Going with something wide enough allows you not to have to worry about closing in the hatch area. You can just go over top of it and put the mounting bolts around the edges to lock it down. I believe theres close to 2" around the hatch opening once its removed.

here is a link to the ebay guys add. Theres a phone number on there and you can call him to get a price on a custom made one to fit your boat. I got a price from him and I believe it was around $400 and that includes the roller too. If I was to do it again, I would buy his in a heart beat ... lol. I saved alot of money but the amount of time and aggravation wasnt worth it IMO. But I picked up the pulpit from the trawler for $30.

I'd definately like to see some pics of your dash work. I started re-doing mine last season and re-did the switch panels and still need to do the guage panel. I'm going to get a mercmonitor and all smartcraft guages for mine eventually to go with the new engine I put in. I'm also waiting till i get my new chart plotter/fishfinder to flush mount in there.

The lowrance HDS gen2 combo units are awesome, especially if your a fisherman. I want the new HDS 8 combo unit with structure scan real bad but at $2000 for the lowrance setup and another $1000 for the mercmonitor and smartcraft guages, Its gonna have to wait.
 
CAGE RATTLER said:
WOW...... Where do you find the time to get so much done!!
I work 2-10 and cant get anything done during the week and unfortunately never seem to get much done over the weekends either ... lol.
Click to expand...
I have to carve out the time, I don't get to spend all day on it very often...but I've got a strong request from the admiral to have that boat in the water by May 1st. So that helps!

CAGE RATTLER said:
Your canvas looks great! I need to get one of those cockpit covers myself. I'd probably just use it for winter storage though cause I would have to pull all my eisenglass off in order to snap it around the window frame since i have the enclosure and hardtop.
Click to expand...
Our last Sea Ray had the same style cockpit cover and it was really convenient for covering when not in use at the marina.

CAGE RATTLER said:
Good find on the screw through the hull. It amazes me how stupid some people are ... lol. The last owner of my boat put a stereo in the cabin and ran the wires in the compartment above the sink and screwed wire holders in to hold the wires and I had a screw coming out the side of my boat that I havent fixed yet. Just filled it with some 4200 till I get around to fixing it. But at least mine wasnt below the water line.
Click to expand...
Yes, people do some really stupid things to their boats, cars, RVs. I'm wondering if this was done by the previous owner or some marina, the previous and original owner was a judge and not the do it yourself type.

CAGE RATTLER said:
I definitely wouldnt put a windlass setup with the stock pulpit. If you look at it, The pulpit itself is only attaching to about 4 inches of the deck because of the anchor hatch. You could probably put in larger bolts and a backing plate to make it solid enough for a roller but i wouldnt chance it with a windlass. I did it the hard way and completely closed in the hatch opening and built a fiberglass pulpit for mine. The pulpit actually came off a 60' Trawler and I cut it down and modified it to fit. That thing is rock solid but dang it was alot of work and i doubt if i would do it again. Theres much easier ways to do it. Theres a guy on ebay that makes pulpits out of starboard and uses SS angle iron to reinforce it. You can have one made to fit your boat alot cheaper than going with teak and its maintenance free. My problem was finding a pulpit wide enough to cover the hatch area and even the one off the trawler was narrower than the amberjacks pulpit. Going with something wide enough allows you not to have to worry about closing in the hatch area. You can just go over top of it and put the mounting bolts around the edges to lock it down. I believe theres close to 2" around the hatch opening once its removed.

here is a link to the ebay guys add. Theres a phone number on there and you can call him to get a price on a custom made one to fit your boat. I got a price from him and I believe it was around $400 and that includes the roller too. If I was to do it again, I would buy his in a heart beat ... lol. I saved alot of money but the amount of time and aggravation wasnt worth it IMO. But I picked up the pulpit from the trawler for $30.
Click to expand...
I don't see the link, but that sounds like a great option. I watched the thread on your pulpit install, it looks awesome, but it looked like a serious project!

CAGE RATTLER said:
I'd definately like to see some pics of your dash work. I started re-doing mine last season and re-did the switch panels and still need to do the guage panel. I'm going to get a mercmonitor and all smartcraft guages for mine eventually to go with the new engine I put in. I'm also waiting till i get my new chart plotter/fishfinder to flush mount in there.

The lowrance HDS gen2 combo units are awesome, especially if your a fisherman. I want the new HDS 8 combo unit with structure scan real bad but at $2000 for the lowrance setup and another $1000 for the mercmonitor and smartcraft guages, Its gonna have to wait.
Click to expand...
I'll try to get some pics of the dash panel today, it's still in pieces waiting for me to get the gauges, but I'll try to show the before/after panels.

I'm re-thinking panel mounting the Lowrance, my concern is the load it will put on that plexiglass and whether it'll crack really soon or be fine. Any ideas there? Appearance wise it would be really nice!!! I'm also researching the HDS7 because of the price difference vs. the screen size. I'm not getting structure scan yet, just the dual beam ducer and the unit.
 
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that didn't work....:grin:

Fixed it.
 
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And that is the one for the 255? Or just a link to the place that makes them?
 
Theres a phone number on there and you can call him to get a price on a custom made one to fit your boat. You need a wider one to fit. The one he listed is 11" wide.
 
CAGE RATTLER said:
Theres a phone number on there and you can call him to get a price on a custom made one to fit your boat. You need a wider one to fit. The one he listed is 11" wide.
Click to expand...
I'll give him a call! Thanks for the help!
 
Well, tomorrow I'll be starting back on the boat again. I'm hoping to get the bottom pressure washed and some sanding done. I also want to strip some more teak...I'm also planning to at least start patching the screw hole in the hull! I'll get some pics of the progress.
 
Well, I got some of the teak done. I decided that I wanted to, for now anyway, just stick with clean and oiled teak. As bad as it is to strip the old varnish off I doubt I'll put any on...ever.

We did LOTS of wiring today, I sorted out my shore power which was not working, got the battery charger/tender doing it's job now. The float switch for the bilge pump was working but fell apart in my hand when manually activated so I'm replacing it. I found a bad circuit breaker in the trim/tilt pump and will be trying to get the replacement tomorrow. The blower fan is bad, I'm going to replace it and install a second fan, also the vent hoses are badly deteriorated so they will get replaced as well. I fixed the fresh water wash down pump, the switch was corroded so I disassembled it and cleaned it out, works great now. Many of the in-line fuses were rusted/corroded and had bad connections.

I also test fit the new dash panel...not sure if I like it or not. I may go back to silver, opinions welcomed!
eb2f5572.jpg


I still need to re-wire the dash switches and replace several fuse holders and I'd like to replace the switches themselves...just don't know if I wanna go that deep this soon. I already have a list a mile long for next winter.

I just want to see everything working...goal one, stay focused...I end up getting distracted and chasing "rabbits" instead of just finishing the basics and getting the boat to the water.
 
It does hit a point where you have to cut bait and fish. Finish up what you are working on now and start getting ready for the summer. Keep a notebook on the boat and write down things as you see them, but enjoy the summer. I have been working on the boat all winter. I am down to the last couple of items, but I have also decided when to stop and move forward for launch May 1 if the docks are in.
 
When I get done with all of the essentials it's going into the interior shop. The goal is to have her in the water by May 1st. I'm hoping to finish all of the bilge wiring today and the panel/cabin wiring tomorrow. My two big items are bottom paint and the rest of the teak in the cockpit. Oh, and my cockpit scuppers are allowing water to get into the bilge so I'm going to silicone the gaps and do a permanent fix next winter.
 
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