www.iFourWinns.com

Yes the trailer was bent and it is not the original trailer for the boat. I think that the previous owner wanted it gone so he found the cheapest trailer that would fit and it happened to be galvanized but it wasn't re-enforced in the area just before the tongue. So the weight of the boat bent that area. In order to fix it, I placed the tongue under my suburban and then used jacks to bend it back into proper alignment. Then I used some angle iron and welded new supports in to keep the trailer from bending.





The last pic is the "after" pic. It rides much better now wnd is so much easier to launch.

I am not sure how much salt water it was in. I bought it in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. I just assumed it was in salt water from all the pitting that it had on the outdrive. The risers looked pretty good, I did have to replace the hump tubes because one split on me and was leaking into the bilge. Instead of replacing with the old 3.5 inch hump tubes that would have been at least $30 a piece I used 4 ply 3.5 inch 400 degree F silicone tubing to make couplings for the exhaust. Saved me 100 dollars on that fix. Here is a picture of my work. it is working perfectly.

You can see 2 of the tubes in this picture.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

Something else I mentioned I did was install a new depth finder into the "all-in-one" dash because the old Lowrance one was intermittently (mostly NOT) working. Here is what is looks like.

Not anywhere perfect but it works well for me.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

I found out this last winter that the rear seat was dry rotted underneath all of the upholstery. I had to take it apart and replace the wood of the entire rear seat. The hard part was trying to replace the wrap around portion of the backing of the seat. The wood is actually bent in some sort of press and there is a shell of fiberglass affixed to the outer portion of the seat. The lower portion of the wrap around backing was completely dry rotted.

I was going to try and replace the wood but had a very difficult time trying to find out how to bend wood especially to the length that I needed it. What I ended up doing was replacing the seat in panels.
As you may be able to see, I kept the entire upper portion of the seat which was still intact. I cut out all of the old dry rot. I then epoxied all of the existing wood in the curve. Next I cut new pieces of wood to fill in the missing portions. I then epoxied all of the wood to make it completely water tight.

Next was the curves that were a pain the butt to figure out. What i did in the end was to cut strips of plywood in about 1 inch sections and placed them along the curve of the back seat. I sanded and shaped them to fit the curve perfectly. I then epoxied all of the strips of wood and then slid them into place and used body filler fiberglass to set them into place. Sanded them down to remove rough edges and then fiberglassed it again.




Everything was layered with resin to keep the wood water tight.

The bottom portion of the seat was much easier. It too was well rotted but didn't take as long to figure out how to replace. I cut all the pieces and then resined the entire seat portion to again prevent water intrusion.




Here it is all done. Should last another 25 years now.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

Welcome along, and great work!!

I had to do exactly the same to my 238 vista seats etc, including full reupholstery so i know how time consuming it is!
Great job though, looks superb.

Thanks for the complement. One question I had for you is how did you end up replacing the bent portions of the wood? That was so difficult for me. How did you do it?

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

luckily (for me!) mine is a 1999/2000 year, so slightly later than yours - and although the seats are a very similar shape, the backrest of mine was a composite board, like a formed plastic panel. So i didn't actually have to do any curve-forming like you, it does look like a bit of a nightmare!

The base of all my seats were ply, just like yours. it did seem strange to me, why the whole lot couldn't be a composite board to avoid any issues with rot etc.

pics of mine are here: http://www.smwebhead.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13772

Cheers

So I updated the prop to a 15 x 17 aluminum prop that I bought for 45 dollars on ebay. I put it on and took to the lake. I do believe that the boat did much better with the different prop. It seemed to plane out faster than the old prop and I feel I have a little more power on the low end. I think I might have dropped a couple of mph on the top end but I don't use the boat to go fast I mainly use to cruise and pulling a tube.
Thanks for the recommendation on the newer prop LVChris.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

You're welcome Crenche I have a question for you. I tubed with my Vista 1 time it was kind of miserable...the rope wouldn't come out of the water and after a few pulls the tube dipped in front and the nylon cover came right off and the inflatable part went floating away...luckily no one was hurt and I recovered all the parts. The nylon cover was actually sinking. So question is do you have a ball, or a rack or something that's getting that rope out of the water?

It depends on the towable but sometimes it helps to be towards the back of the tube and pulling up on the handles or if you have two riders, put the heavier one in the back..

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NEW - 2000 Cobalt 246 w/454 Magnum 385HP | SOLD - 2000 FW Horizon 180 LS w/5.0Gi 250HP Volvo Penta

You're welcome Crenche I have a question for you. I tubed with my Vista 1 time it was kind of miserable...the rope wouldn't come out of the water and after a few pulls the tube dipped in front and the nylon cover came right off and the inflatable part went floating away...luckily no one was hurt and I recovered all the parts. The nylon cover was actually sinking. So question is do you have a ball, or a rack or something that's getting that rope out of the water?[/quote]

I don't have a rack to lift the rope out of the water. My tube doesn't seem to ride too low in the water so I don't have too many problems with the rope in the water.
My setup is with one of those cable Y things that I hook onto each side of those rings by the rear platform. I then hook my rope onto the yellow plastic pulley. The rope does get in the water sometimes but not too bad.
You might want to try the rear cleats to bring the rope out of the water more.
I wonder how those with swim platforms manage this as well.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.

LVChris.
Ok I tried pulling my tube with the Y attachment on the lower rings and then again attached to the rear cleats. The rear cleats was much better at getting the rope out of the water. Try this out. It should work much better for you this way.
The 15 x 17 prop does so much better for water sports.

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1995 Vista 238 Fuel injected 5.0L OMC/Coba/sx
SOLD 1990 Maxum 1800 bowrider.