1987 Hydrostream Valero YT Project

Picked up a 1987 Hydrostream Valero YT project boat. It's a Hydrostream that has never been redone so It's probably going to need a full re core. Need a full interior. The Gelcoat is in really rough shape. It's not full of chips and scratches. But it is very sunburnt and faded. Looks good when it's wet. Not when it's dry. I am hoping I can sand off the sunburnt gelcoat without sanding all the way through like I did on my Checkmate.
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Man I hope you can get by with some wetsanding, looks really nice when you had it wet.

Unfortunately just sanding and polishing is not gonna happen. I tried sanding in a couple spots. Went right through the gelcoat really quick. Looks like the gelcoat is less than half as thick as it was on the Checkmate. Especially on the graphics. Either Hydrostream makes the gelcoat very thin on purpose to save weight. Or someone has already sanded down the gelcoat on this 38 year old boat.

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While I was cleaning this thin out I noticed someone cut 4 triangles in the top of the sponsons. I took my Soil Master Moisture Meter, which works great. Very sensitive but the needle starts up slightly. I pushed it all the way down thru the foam to the bottom of the sponsons in all 4 spots. They are bone dry. Foam feels perfect. I can seal up the holes and not touch the sponsons.

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I am going to have to investigate further, but so far, the transom looks good. It's got a nice heavy duty aluminum plate on it. It's either factory or custom made specifically for this boat. It will never come off without taking the skin of the boat with it. Poking through the bolt holes with a spike, the wood in the transom feels solid. The wood is not wet or soft at all. I think I might not have to replace it. I am going to take the inner reinforcing plate off if I can. Then put a bolt in with just a washer and torque it down tight. If it torques down quick and maintains that torque I will know the transom is not compressing. Sure looks pretty good on the inside. I am surprised it has no knees. It will when I am done. Anybody have any ideas on how to test it a better way?

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The hammer test is pretty good. Use a ball pean and whack the transom and it should bounce handily if its solid. If it thuds dead with little to no bounce then its mush. easy comparison is whack the side of the hull below the rub rail where there is no core and its dead. When things are solid the bounce is similar to an anvil test you get a lot of brrrrrrts out of the hammer. Hyrostream transoms are the one thing that isnt prone to rot as much as the core though. Soft core is more dangerous than soft transom imo although both dangerous, just ranking the risk factor is all. One good hard wave hit at high speed and man oh man will that test the integrity of things in a hurry

Transom is definitely solid. That lower inner plate came right off. Some moron left the stock square washers under that plate. There was a gap between the plate and the transom. Adhesive was never squished. I put a bolt back in with just the washer. After the bolt got tight it took about 3/4 of a turn too achieve 75 ft lbs. torque with a fine thread bolt. When you strike the transom with a hammer, you get a nice solid rebound. (Thanks LakeFever). I have not pulled the rest of the floor yet. But I can see there are no real stringers in this boat. Just a piece of fiberglass about as thick as the skin of the hull to support the floor. I can see my fingers through it. They go all the way to the notch. But don't actually connect to the transom. I cant believe this boat is rated for 175 Horsepower with no transom support.


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After crawling around underneath I found the worst part. There is some delamination on the side of the pad. And it looks like he hit something in the center. It's not that big of an area. Shouldn't be too hard to fix. But do I fix the core first or the outside first?

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start on the inside and leave the outside for the end. This way when your skills are all practiced up and primed you can work on the running surface. Where inside your primary concern is an air pocket free good bond. I’d be checking the pad and hull for flatness and true before laminating though so you don’t stick it back together twisted or hooked. Once I was satisfied there move onto lamination

Yeah. That's what I am thinking too. I am going too fix the structure first. That way when I flip it over I don't have to worry about it twisting. It seems to sit nice and straight on what appears to be it's original factory custom trailer. (Too bad the crossbars are rotten)
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Preliminary checks for any twist with my level all come out the same. Of course I will do more accurate checks before I start glassing. I will not be pulling the cap so I will only be able to adjust so much. I use the 3 point approach. 2 level stands at the transom. 1 at the bow. If the boat was built straight it should still be. If not, even with the structure out, I wont be able to straighten it much without loosening the cap.


This will be my 4th boat restoration. My fiberglass skills are pretty good. At least I like to think so. My dad taught me when I was about 12 years old. We fixed a crack from a log strike in his 14' Fabuglas. A couple years later, I was 14, his friend gave me a 17' Slickcraft fishing boat with a blown outboard. I found a old burnt up cabin boat floating around the bay with a complete Volvo Penta I/O in it. My dad and I cut the engine out of the transom with a chain saw. Brought it home. One day when he was at work I cut the hole in the transom and installed the gimbal bracket by myself. He was a little mad but I said it was my boat and I wanted to do it myself. Then he looked and said it came out perfect. I built up the transom with wood. Made a little deck area and the inside gunwale. Covered everything with fiberglass. Then painted the entire boat with Varithane Colors in Plastic with a 3" roller. It came out great. Looked like it was factory. Nobody believed I converted it from an outboard. I used it for 2 years then sold it to my dads boss.

Because this is a YT hull it does not have a true flat pad. It has a concave V pad. That should make it fun to repair it. A nice flat pad is relatively easy to make by hand compared to a twin concave pad. I might use plaster or Bondo to make a mold of an undamaged area of the pad to use as a sanding block. Sort of like you would do to duplicate plaster moldings. Try and get the pad as equal as possible. Although it is probably not quite as important as it is on a true V hull. The sponsons on this YT seem to be about 1/4" deeper then the pad. So not much balancing required.

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I am not quite ready to give up on saving the gelcoat. So I tried sanding the front deck some more in a really bad spot. I taped off the graphics with painters tape. I used 220 on my DA sander. Changed the paper 3 times just doing outside the starboard most graphics. Then 1500 wet by hand. Then a quick hand compound and wax. Big difference. I might be able to save it. Still a little cloudy but I really did not polish it.

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Darn good effort, I bet with some polishing and a coating of wax or ceramic it'll be pretty decent.

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Originally Posted by Dain

Darn good effort, I bet with some polishing and a coating of wax or ceramic it'll be pretty decent.

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Thanks. Considering it felt as rough as it looked when I started. And It took me around 45 minutes with 220 dry on a DA sander to sand around 6 square feet. Then only wet sanded for around 2 minutes. It looks decent already. Hope I can get the rest to look like that.

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I really want to know If I am going to be able to save the gelcoat or not so I did some more sanding on some of the really bad spots. I taped off the graphics to try not to kill them. They are thin but in surprisingly good shape. Not damaged at all like the blue. It takes a lot of sanding to get the speckles out. They are not really speckles. They are craters in the surface. It's like running your hand over a nonskid surface. You have to keep sanding until they disappear before the surface is smooth. Then a little more to get the good color back. By that time the gelcoat is very thin. And you really cant see your starting to sand through until you wipe it off with a wet rag. I sanded thru in 3 more spot on the center stripe. I am going to keep going because no matter what it's gonna need to be sanded. But if I sand through in too many more spots, I probably going to have to re gelcoat the whole boat.

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While tedious to do you can touch those thin spots with fresh gel or better yet just gel the areas that are super chalked and buff them back in. Cutting fresh gel back down flush to old gel is tricky not to burn through the old gel trying to buff in the new. One thing for sure that just be done is you have to cut from the new gel out towards the old gel or you’ll never get the lip cut flush. If you cut back into the new gel the lip will recede but stay a lip. There is also the option of fresh gel taped off clean at the graphics and then use a straight razor to pull along the edge of the gel lip which really brings down the sharp edge a lot and with a little finesse you can make this a seamless factory looking repair. You can also just leave the lip and use some pin stripe auto graphic tapes to cover. Lots of options here to work with. I can tell you with certainty after my experience I would try everything to work with non crazed gel before I committed to fully refinishing a hull again. The refinishing was the majority of the work on my build. Brutal work too endless sanding