Yeee Haaa, running two cleaning tools at the same time! Lots of noise and action too.
With virtually all of the flooring, side panels, and floor structure out, the pressure washer was used to great effect today. Years of grime came off everything, sucked into a 12 gal wet/dry shop vac.
I hosed everything down with a degreaser first, let it sit a few days, and I think the grime came off easier.
The shop vac got just about every drop of water, and all the grime along with various bits of "things" dropped into the bilge over the years. It's virtually clean now.
I'll let things dry (got a fan in there now) and will take the shop vac to it again before I begin painting the bilge and side panels (Interlux steel gray, an almost exact match for the paint in the hull, matched with a chip I took to the marine paint store).
This is sort of the peak of the curve, regarding disassembly. The fuel tank still remains to be dealt with, but everything else is clean and it will be easier to work on now. Looking inside the tank with a bright light it seems to be okay. I was tempted to drop a glow stick down into the tank, but I didn't want you guys to read about me in the newspapers, so I figured I better not. I don't know about any danger there, but didn't want to push my luck!
I measured again today, and I can get a 55 gal polyethylene tank in there, but not real sure I want to. 50" x 25-1/2" x 15-1/2" with a taper on the bottom to be installed in the bottom of a transom. I would install mine horizontally along the bottom of the rear seat. Plenty of room down there, but I'm sure what seems to be a simple task will become a big one. I will, however, take the old tank out because I have to replace that rubber filler hose, a job I'm really not looking forward to.
The removal of the tank and an internal flushing will probably save me some headaches in the future, just by getting all the junk out of there I can't see right now.
As a hedge against the "old tank blues" I have a nice RACOR fuel filter and water remover to install on the suction side of the tank.
Now the job of getting down there to work on that rudder hook-up assembly will be cleaner, thankfully. There was about 40 years of Lake George dirt and grime collected back there.
CC didn't use the automatic bailing device on the glass boats, that they used on the wood boats, probably because they didn't need to evacuate that much water. It would have been a nice addition, and I have a spare one. Hmmmm, perhaps, but no....it would take another hole in the hull to do that.
Time now for a nice cigar on the deck and a glass of Black Label on ice (shaken, not stirred)
Regards,
Paul