Glastron Surface drive

[CharlieN]

I clearly need to get on this site more,
I just had a "moment" worth laughing about.
I wanted to know how this boat sits in the water,
I feel I am far enough along to launch the boat on my own pond so I could learn how it will sit.
Well that did not work well. The pond level gets low late in the year.
Many years back with a hurricane and a rather nasty summer storm had flooded some higher land with a similar "fire" pond to mine washing allot of invasive growth/weeds down to our yard.
In recent years the shallower end where I launch now gets mucky, oh OK muddy. Used to be a good firm sandy beach.
So this morning I backed the boat in, well part way, The boat was getting into the invasive reeds while not looking like it would not float off, so I chose to drive out, Well what looks like sand is now quicksand. The rear tires on my little Montero just sunk in the quicksand. This one does not have the triple locking diffs.
My wife called a friend and he said he would be here in 20 minutes. Heck he has 10 employees who are known to get real lazy when he goes offsite.
Even his big dually Dodge was getting it's share spinning wheels on the lawn. Of his 7 dually
Dodges this is the only one without triple lockers.
When we got my rig up from the pond we walked back to look, on the shallow slope the hull had water up to the bow.
Turns out when I backed in, the stern was in deep enough the openings for the exhaust were talking in water. By the time we were pulling this the hull had sunk down onto the trailer. I think the partially built headers were still above the water but that is the first check I need to make.
All this fun, none of us used a camera, dang it, I hate missing the stupid moments.

[NICE PAIR]

Congratulations! I've done lots of dumb **** that I wanted my own pics of, why is it I never have a camera but everybody else does?
Neat project!

[CharlieN]

One thing I came to realize the past few days was the hull was essentially floating properly but the garden hose connector for the engine flush port was not snugged up, just enough to lower the stern for the exhaust openings to settled into the water.
The bare wood I need to coat/glass over was dry enough that I could get coating and getting glassing, but now with wet wood and rain arriving tomorrow I will have no progress for some time. Not to mention I have other stuff I need to do with the change of season soon.

[CharlieN]

No progress on this over the past month, but I am clearing indoor space to bring this project into my basement shop, I dream to have this indoors by the holidays.

[CharlieN]

I have the boat in the basement. Kind of interesting backing a big dually Dodge uphill in 8-10 hardpack old snow. I might choose to remove the tongue of the trailer which will give me a few more feet of workspace back at the drive. I have no photos, My friend's wife might have some on her phone.

[CharlieN]

Kind of nice to have it inside the shop. Workbenches are crazy cluttered, they got piled on all year since that was not where my jobs were. Time will clear them I have allot to do still.
A shot over the transom, one of my most important area to progress. I have not bought all the exhaust tubing.
Originally I was going to build a stainless header with aluminum water jacket. But with most of the material sources gone since they were ether aging out or simply squashed by the Chinese.
As such the header design is changing. I have been trying to source decent aluminum marine marine exhaust, non that I see are performance oriented.
This engine will be spinning up much higher than a ski boat or fishing boat.
Here are some with the engine sitting on it's mounts.








More later

[89LASER]

Damn!!!! I wish I had a basement to work in over the winter. I've been following this build since I have a Glastron/Carlson in my collection. I like the work you've been doing.

[CharlieN]

Humm December flew buy, I got a small amount of time to start the engine enclosure. I am using Laminators Inc Alumalite panels for the sidewalls.


We had a house full of friends for the holiday but but one of the wives carried on about their overall win of the of the one Lap of America, Nice to hear since I have been building their competition cars for 15 years now. I needed to get away and made this.
I then moved up front with making the side panel for shifter.
The shifter itself I made since anyone I found online was way out of my reach price wise.
This image is one of the first in 2025,


I will be running a foot throttle which utilizes a light 7 conductor wire.
The bracket for this has not been made yet now that the house is empty.

[CharlieN]

We had the afternoon of New years day alone so I pulled some plywood in from the fresh foot of snow outside the shop. For the most part they were trimmed to fit already except for the supports for the rear seat back. Once I trimmed those spots I set the floor in place.
It is kind of nice in there now. The outer sections will be foamed underneath.
The center bay will have the gas tanks, for now I am installing the cheapy 22 gal plastic tank that came in the hull.

[CharlieN]

I have an interesting issue with taking photos at this time.
My Cannon SX60 camera stopped taking photos, the image count is maxed out at 9999 so it is possible it just can not label the image, yet it rolled the counter over and was working the past few months since.
Last night I dug out my newest SX70 and it does recognize this year.
To me it is nowhere as good as the 60 is but it is what I have.

[CharlieN]

Lucky me for owning more than one camera, I thought I was going to need to use the newer SX70 but I realized I still have a few SX60s. This way I can continue taking shots without a break in the image number.
I have started mocking up and building the exhaust.
The headers I bought are some Chinese Street rod parts with a center drop.
The LS engine has symmetrical ports allowing he to turn the pipes facing upwards.
Originally they had 3 bolt outlet flanges, I machined them off.
The metric outlet size is ideal fit to weld a 2.5" tube onto.
This will have a 3" outer tube for the water jacket. The 4 tubes of the header will get a 2 1/4 stainless Outer jacket formed over them.
These shots are a proof of concept of how it will fit to the through hull thimbles. The EX will exit where the factory EX for the 455 Olds engine pipes were.

[NICE PAIR]

Are you gonna jacket the exh. port tubes or wrap them? Nice work!

[CharlieN]

Jacketed.
A real pia since I can no longer source different size tubes with the same bend radius.

[CharlieN]

Are you gonna jacket the exh. port tubes or wrap them? Nice work!

I have 2.25od stainless bends here that I will fabricate the outer wall of the header.
from the Collector the inner tube is 2 1/2, outer is 3" as seen in this mockup.

Frustrating that I can no longer find the two sizes for the collector in the same radius. Since the outer tube as displayed would look like poo with a bunch of pie cuts the inner tube is getting sliced and welded as needed.
There will be a rubber connector between the engine and hull pipes.

The engine pipes need Wideband O2 sensors as well

[NICE PAIR]

You sure ain't Skeered . again, Nice work!