Wed, 13 Dec 2000
Hi Barry, It's been a while since I updated you on my progress on the Renegade I'm building. This has probably been since I went through a move in the last year and spent most of the time working on the new house. You will notice the different garage that the boat is in. Anyways, we're back to work at it now and hope to have it completed by spring.
For the last couple of months I've been rebuilding an old 350-255hp Mercruiser that I bought from a friend. I stripped the whole motor, cleaned it up, and added a PRO4000 cam, 750 Edelbrock Carb, honed the cylinders and re-ringed the pistons, new lifters, and had the heads machined from 194's to 202's. I am estimating the horsepower of the completed motor to be somewhere from 350-360. I removed the water pump and made some aluminum plates up to plug the holes in the block to accept the intake pipes from the jet pump.
Instead of the Hamilton jet drive which I was going to rebuild, I acquired a rebuilt Berkeley 12JG jet pump which I installed and would better suit this application.
The seat tops were make so they could be removed for ease of upholstering and the fuel tanks were make out of wood to be used as templates for the future aluminum tanks, which I placed in the middle of the boat instead of under the seats to try to keep the weight more centered.
I am now going to finish the seats around the back, cover the motor, finish the flooring and then fibreglass the top half of the boat which will be then painted and upholstered.
I will try to keep you updated as I go.
Regards
James Nikolai