1979 Viking build

[Hippie459MN]

Right on! I have never personally seen one like that before. I like it! Carry on then.

[tnelsmn]

Good looking tank! Getting pretty close, Lake. Think you can splash this season?

[LakeFever]

Thanks Tony, we had set a goal of may 28th earlier this year. We drew out the jobs that needed doing and have been poking away. The trouble is many other jobs I didn’t foresee popped up along the way and this stuff always takes longer than you think. We are very close now. At least half of the wiring is complete we have been poking away at that as well. Power head is built and ready to bolt up. The biggest job left in front is to finish painting the engine cover which I have been avoiding because I’m not set up for painting at the moment. I rounded up four ecu’s and got them all tested. Thankfully all check out good to go. Injectors are cleaned and flowed too. Still have to mount the windshield, and install the shifter, wire up the smart stick along with the trim/tilt and jack plate relays, install ignition switch. We are getting there

worth noting here I am one of those guys where the build process is as much of the fun ( more? ) than the actual using of the things I build so I’m not rushing any of this. Last Saturday my whole family was around while I built the motor at a snails pace. Weather was perfect. We bbq’d rib eyes and had music going living life without a care in the world. Best day of the year for sure. That’s the speed I like to go at with this stuff. During the layup phase we had some periods of high intensity. Most of the layup was a lot of fun too. The refinishing ordeal was hellish which is ironic as my background in auto body and paint had me going into that without a concern. Once this boat is done I have a long list of other projects in the wait and some still on the hunt. You guys know the drill, 99% of us here are all the same type. Addicted to doing instead of talking. The irony is I talk so little throughout the day. I stay out of sight, keep my head down, and work away 7 days a week. I blabber on here about this project more than anything else I have going on lol. I’ve been trying to help other members out wherever I can too just to return all the support the S&F community has brought me. Sometimes I get in over my head but I’m trying to help, don’t always have the perfect answers. Still having fun though. Strange that I’ve been here long enough to see the sites user base shift so much. We are missing some of our stalwarts who were always good to read. I sure miss following your build Tony you hit a home run with that thread and your videos too wow thanks I really enjoyed all that work. It’s a bit too much for me to reach those levels of content production. Maybe one day

anyways almost 7am gotta rock. It’s so close now I can hardly wait for the first fire in the motor!!

[LakeFever]

Tony what rear view mirror did you put on your boat? It seems so securely mounted and minimalist I like it. How did you mount it?

[tnelsmn]

Oh man I couldn't tell you, that mirror was bought in probably 1977 when my fathers previous Hydrostream Vandal was new. It survived when the Vandal broke a strap and rolled off the trailer totaling the boat and leading to the purchase of my Viking.

If you can find one similar it mounts with essentially a C channel over the top of the windshield frame and two set screws on the forward edge of the windshield frame.

[tnelsmn]

worth noting here I am one of those guys where the build process is as much of the fun ( more? ) than the actual using of the things I build so I’m not rushing any of this. Last Saturday my whole family was around while I built the motor at a snails pace. Weather was perfect. We bbq’d rib eyes and had music going living life without a care in the world. Best day of the year for sure. That’s the speed I like to go at with this stuff. During the layup phase we had some periods of high intensity. Most of the layup was a lot of fun too. The refinishing ordeal was hellish which is ironic as my background in auto body and paint had me going into that without a concern. Once this boat is done I have a long list of other projects in the wait and some still on the hunt. You guys know the drill, 99% of us here are all the same type. Addicted to doing instead of talking. The irony is I talk so little throughout the day. I stay out of sight, keep my head down, and work away 7 days a week. I blabber on here about this project more than anything else I have going on lol. I’ve been trying to help other members out wherever I can too just to return all the support the S&F community has brought me. Sometimes I get in over my head but I’m trying to help, don’t always have the perfect answers. Still having fun though. Strange that I’ve been here long enough to see the sites user base shift so much. We are missing some of our stalwarts who were always good to read. I sure miss following your build Tony you hit a home run with that thread and your videos too wow thanks I really enjoyed all that work. It’s a bit too much for me to reach those levels of content production. Maybe one day

Lake, you sure hit the nail on the head there! Looking back I loved every minute of the entire build process of my boat, even though sometimes it was difficult or dirty and itchy. I love having a project to work on, the endless problem solving is where it's at for me. Sharing it on here was the biggest, most involved writing project of my life haha. Now that the project is done, and set up figured out, I find myself not running it nearly as much as I used to and looking for the next build. It spends more of its life pulling myself on a slalom ski or my nieces and nephew on a tube. But thats mainly why I built it, so the next generation can have as many fond memories on the lake with the "blue boat" as I did as a kid.

Thank you so much for the kind words!

[LakeFever]

Tony where did you get the capacity plate from? Mine is absent. I can only seem to find a vector one online

[Hippie459MN]

Tony where did you get the capacity plate from? Mine is absent. I can only seem to find a vector one online

Tony had them made. I have one from him and they are amazing! They are metal too. He might have a few left but he had a batch of them made a while back.

[LakeFever]

Been whittling down the list of tiny details. Got the grab bar in for the front passenger. Got the passenger seat mounted. Wired and test the jack plate. Got all the nav and gauge lights wired and tested. Bilge wired and tested. Shifter in. Working on mounting the windshield. I say working on because the windshield frame needs some straightening and paint. I tried it out with the factory silver and it doesn’t look right on this color so we are going to paint it black. It also has some snaps for some sort of mooring cover on the frame. I’m going to remove those and epoxy the holes up. Going to give the plexi a quick polish and get it bolted down. The engine cover is coming along it’s pretty much ready for primer. I’m going to hit that with urethane 2k and flex agent. I’ll cut that down to 500 grit finish and spray with base clear most likely. I may use the polyurethane hull paint but probably base clear.

[LakeFever]

Got the repairs done to the cowling and it’s now in a very high build primer with flex additive. Once I get the base plate shot in black I’ll start assembling the rest of the power head and rigging. I noticed when I took the bunji plates off the cowl there were some cracks in those cavities so I beefed them up quite a bit with some fiberglass mesh and stainless backing plates. Assembled all wet so the bond would be really strong. The wiggle test is noticeably stiffer on the entire sides of the cowls after these repairs. Being flexible it should be good to go. Ain’t pretty but under the hood so won’t see em. All repairs were done with epoxy flexible bumper repair. The pricey stuff that comes in the dual caulking tubes and requires the dual squirt gun. Anyways closing in

[LakeFever]

Haven’t had much time this week to get any work done on the boat. Mounted up my break in prop tonight just for some fun. Tempest 27 race cut

[LakeFever]

Got the engine cover sprayed out today. It’s so black the pics don’t show anything unless super close. This was a job I was putting off for some time. After all the paint work gel disaster on the hull i was gun shy. My skirt is like new so I thought I didn’t need to paint it so I left it out of the job. Now that the base and cover are sprayed they are 10x blacker and the skirt looks like crap. So this painting thing won’t leave me be! I’m going to try and hit the skirt with adhesion promoter and shoot the paint straight to that without priming and see how it goes. The good news is now that the base is complete I can bolt the power head to the mid and get to firing this thing up.

[LakeFever]

This cover keeps kicking my ass. After messing around with every 1/8 pipe fitting I could find I finally got the mid plate water route planned out. It did make the hose coming from the plate through the cover very tight however. Fortunately I have a few vst’s around so I used one of the pre bent rubber hoses off it to plumb the plate port in with. Worked slick. Seems so easy but I spent a bit of time messing with this. I also bought a stainless base plate for this cover and most of the holes for the plate into the plastic were cracked or fatigued from years of use so I thought I’d get crafty. I used the plasma cutter and I cut the old base plate into a half inch wide plate to support the top better than little washers would. Got it all cut, cleaned and painted. Got the it all bolted up with new stainless 1/4’s and nylocs. Put it on the mid and went to install the power head and then my great idea came to smack me in the face. The block interferes with the top cap plate so I had to pull the whole thing back apart. I have to notch the plate and clearance a couple spots to make this work. What a pain. That’s what I get for trying to make custom haha. Anyways if I can get off the couch I’ll make another attempt tonight.

[LakeFever]

War of attrition today but I got the power head mounted finally. Thought I was going to be at this stage before noon. Ran into issues trying to get that last nut around the coolant hose deal. Threw in the towel for today

[LakeFever]

Details matter. I couldn’t use these so I peened out some fresh stainless ones. New buckshot racing cowl seal. Decals to install and whew, this cowl is complete