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  1. #1
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    18’ Baker Tunnel Restoration

    Hey RDP, it’s been a long time coming but I thought I’d finally share the timeline of the ‘89 Baker I purchased in June 2020. It started as a simple Covid project with the goal to just flip it after some minor fixes. Once I finally got my hands on it I realized two very important things:

    1) There was nothing minor about this thing
    2) I loved it too much to sell it

    Somewhere along the line, somebody had removed the original late 80’s Merc that was on it and replaced it with a ‘79 140 Tower of Power. This motor taught me so much, mostly that I hate those old inline’s … apparently the ‘79 was the last year of the 140 because Merc was introducing the v6 150 and they didn’t want a competitor to sales.

    Well as it turns out this motor had compression all over the place, yet it started and idled ok on muffs so I bought it. Here’s some pictures of the day I bought it:

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:37 PM.

  2. #2
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    Well I had a decision to make. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money at that point, and as you can see from the pictures I had an entire interior to redo, a paint job to fix the peeling clearcoat on the top cap, and now a motor to replace.

    I called a few interior places and got quotes from $4-10k. I realized that this was going to be a huge mistake, and the only way to make this happen was to just do it myself. I’d never sewn anything at all, so I went out and bought an old industrial sewing machine and went to town over many many days.

    It came out pretty decent I guess. It has over 150 hours on it now without any catastrophic failures so I’d say I’m happy. Made $200 flipping the sewing machine and the materials were about $700 so all in about $500 and 60-70 hours of labor I think.

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:37 PM.

  3. #3
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    Next project was the paint. At this point I had still planned on flipping it once it was in decent shape so I didn’t want to go all out making it super nice or anything. I spent like $100 on some 2 part Interlux paint and I rolled and tipped the top cap only. The sides were still in decent ish shape. It came out like… ok. The saying “good from afar, but far from good” definitely holds true here.
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    It got the job done for the last two seasons so it served its purpose. Don’t let the picture fool you though, it was not smooth or nice by any means.






  4. #4
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    Next up was the motor. I had determined after I had just spent $300 on a new external trim pump that the old TOP was toast. I was super pissed that I wasted the money fixing trim on a blown motor, but you live and learn.

    I myself didn’t determine that the motor was toast though. I had been struggling so bad with trying to diagnose the issues I was having with it that I finally threw in the towel and took it to a shop. I got a call a few days later that the gel seal at the crank case halves was leaking which is why the carb rebuild did nothing at all and it would fall on its face with over 10% throttle.

    This was a heartbreaker for me because I was trying to stay under $5k for everything including the purchase of the boat, and now I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

    The owner of the shop said he had an ‘89 Suzuki DT-140 that he’d sell me for $2500 plus another $1000 to do the install, carb rebuilds, lower unit service, and general tuneup. I negotiated for $3000 and he agreed.

    Over 3 weeks went by and he hadn’t touched the boat. I understood because it was the heart of summer, but I was more anxious than ever because it was SUMMER and I was just dying to get out there on the water in this boat I had worked so hard on to finish in time. Well I had enough after a month so I drove up there and I said look, I’ll give you the $3k if you let me use your shop and I’ll just do it myself. He laughed and agreed thinking I wasn’t serious.

    Three days later I had a rigged and running boat…

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:37 PM.

  5. #5
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    Well what came next was just a TON of use. I of course did the whole top speed runs and was not very satisfied with the 52 mph I was getting out of the Suzuki, but atleast I was on the water. We had so much fun skiing and wakeboarding for 2 straight summers. That Suzuki was an absolute workhorse, never ever left me stranded. Here’s some pictures of how it looked until this most recent stage which I’ll cover in the next post.

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:38 PM.

  6. #6
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    What finally tipped the scales was a leaky gas cap and an over filled tank parked on a decline which destroyed the paint around the cap.

    It wasn’t even the next day that I had it stripped down and up on blocks ready for a full on Alexseal paint job. I started by knocking the surface down with 80 grit on an orbital. Then I cleaned and applied Total Boat TotalFair to the surface and block sanded with a long board and 80 grit. Then moved to 150, and 220. Next came the Alexseal Primer. I applied 3 coats of that and block sanded with 220, then 320. I forgot to mention that I removed the old grab railing on the front because I hated it. I took the opportunity to fill all the holes around the boat I didn’t want with thickened epoxy.

    Last was the paint. It took 2 coats for full hide, and then I applied guide coat and blocked it out with 400 before laying the final “show coat”.

    I’m really bad about taking pictures because I get so involved with head down labor, but here’s what I have:

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:38 PM.

  7. #7
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    So now to get caught up until today.

    I took off the old Suzuki and I replaced it with a Merc XR4. This was actually before the paint job but whatever. I still need to play around with propellers but I’ve hit 62 so far. Much much better.

    Anyways, back to the current project. Now that the paint is done I was able to start re-rigging. I decided I wanted to run a hot foot and a slim mount shifter. I went thru the process of fabricating mounts and plates and crap to make that work. I also rigged trim buttons to my steering wheel and converted to hydraulic steering. Also, all the wiring was completed such as Nav lights, trim, gauges, and drain plug light.

    I repainted the gauge bezels from silver to gloss black as I thought it would look nicer. The swim steps and associated brackets got the same black paint job.

    Tomorrow I have to finish the interior up, vacuum, put all the seats back in, and finally “stripe” the boat. I was I initially going to have just all gloss white but I changed my mind. I sketched out what I plan on doing with it, but it may change. It will be getting a 2” black stripe, 1/4” red stripe, and a 1” metallic silver stripe in the scheme shown on the rough drawing.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by Pilotryan; 01-11-2022 at 12:38 PM.

  8. #8
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    Well, here it is pretty much done. Still need to paint the motor, put a few things on including the Bimini, rebuild the gas cap seals, and run it hard.

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  10. #9
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    Very nice. I think it is much better to do it yourself. You know for sure it's the way you want it.

    Rock
    Team Junk

    No sparkling wiggles in here, only dump truck grinches.

    "Screamin Heathen"

  11. Likes Pilotryan, rgsauger liked this post

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