1986 Tracker Seacraft 20 budget rebuild

[gofastsandman]

http://www.rdsaluminum.com/

these folks have the original drawings.

Yes on the sending unit but look at the pie plate which could be moved for better access.

[Jared]

Haven’t posted in a while, a Lot has been going on keeping me busy with work/family/fishing but have been making a little progress on the boat. The floor is pretty far along, just need a little more glass work on the starboard side and then some final fairing. Since the last update on the floor:

-glued the meranti ply down using epoxy thickened with cabosil. The wood I removed was rotten under the lip toward the gas tank opening, I was able to chisel out all the rotten spots and cut a piece of ply to fit in between the 2 skins. I didn’t want a straight line of a joint in that spot on the deck, although in hindsight I don’t think it mattered anyway so I cut that sawtooth pattern into the joint. It was late and made me feel better.

-after prepping and prefitting the top skin a few times I had a low spot on the ends. I built it up with a couple layers of biax now to save some fairing later.

-top skin glued down with more thickened epoxy. It was hot and had to mix a lot of resin, had to call in reinforcements to make sure I could get everything how I wanted it before any resin started to kick.

-seam between glued down skin and deck ground out a couple inches each way and to put a couple layers of 10 oz plain weave.

-port side filled crack all the way around top skin bonded back on with thickened resin. This will be sanded smooth before 2 plies of glass goes down. Starboard side has ply glued down and cured, now top skin curing.

-this is where I left it tonight. The port side has the 2 layers of 10 oz plain weave on, needs a bit of fairing. The starboard side is sanded and ready for the fiberglass.

[Jared]

Got the starboard side fiberglass laid down, now hoping to pull the boat to work sometime soon. My compressor is too small to run a 16” board sander I have, need the bigger one at work to do a quick job of fairing and sanding the floor repairs.

In the meantime, made a gas tank. This one is just under 52 gallons, made from 1/8” 5052 aluminum. Pressure tested ok, now working on getting the fiberglass slats I made earlier glassed in at the correct height underneath the tank to support it. The nice part about shortening the tank a bit lengthwise and pushing it forward for weight is now all the space behind it will be a new storage compartment eventually.

I want to either coal tar epoxy the tank before the final installation or some other kind of corrosion preventative measure, any ideas? The only DIY coal tar epoxy materials I could find online looked like it was way more material that I need, I didn’t want to waste the extra money. Might try to find a local company to coat it.

[DonV]

Nice "stack of dimes"!!! Very nice work!

[otterhound]

Nice work on the tank!
Rod

[Jared]

Thank guys. Of the entire project making the gas tank is the only thing I have a little experience in, the rest of the boat is a lot of guess work. Doing the best I can on a tight budget.

[flyingfrizzle]

Very nice indeed on the tank, I am getting ready to do a 90 gallon myself for a friend. Looks like it turned out fairly nice. What welder are you using? I just got a Miller Dynasty 280 with the expansion card about a few months ago and so far it is the cats meow.

[Jared]

Originally Posted by flyingfrizzle

Very nice indeed on the tank, I am getting ready to do a 90 gallon myself for a friend. Looks like it turned out fairly nice. What welder are you using? I just got a Miller Dynasty 280 with the expansion card about a few months ago and so far it is the cats meow.

Nice buy. I have been running a syncrowave 250 for a handful of years at work and added a dynasty 210 last year for something a little more portable. It’s a very nice machine, I would love to have a 280 like yours or 350 for the occasional heavy wall aluminum project I get.

I used 3/32 ER5356 filler, 3/32” 2% thoriated tungsten. Pulsed at 0.7 PPS, 190 amps peak, 30% background voltage, 30% peak time. Balance 65% freq 80H. These are settings I have landed on that make me 75% happy on the .125” 5052 I did the tank out of, but I always feel like something is off a tiny bit to get that last bit of quality I’m looking for.

[flyingfrizzle]

Originally Posted by Jared

Nice buy. I have been running a syncrowave 250 for a handful of years at work and added a dynasty 210 last year for something a little more portable. It’s a very nice machine, I would love to have a 280 like yours or 350 for the occasional heavy wall aluminum project I get.

I used 3/32 ER5356 filler, 3/32” 2% thoriated tungsten. Pulsed at 0.7 PPS, 190 amps peak, 30% background voltage, 30% peak time. Balance 65% freq 80H. These are settings I have landed on that make me 75% happy on the .125” 5052 I did the tank out of, but I always feel like something is off a tiny bit to get that last bit of quality I’m looking for.

I takes a good hand to keep up with the pulser. On mishap and your trying to catch back up. Looks really good judging by the one pic. I like to use pulse on some things and have used it at .7pps going down outside corners like that. Really makes a consistent looking weld. I have got used to having a momentary switch on my ck 20 water cooled rig now and can pulse manually as needed with the button. Doing stuff where it is hard to keep up with a foot petal the micro switch really shines. My father dose anodized T-tops and tuna towers and I learned from him so I guess that's where I picked up on that as most of them guys manually pulse.
I can say one thing I really like that has helped me is the amplitude settings. The dynasty 210/280 has them like the 350/400 if you pay the extra $500 for the SD card add on. I have been running higher EP around 180a and 150a EN on advanced square wave and was able to turn my balance up to 80-85% and still get a good cleaning action. The miller manual suggest running higher EN for more penetration but I have found if I do the opposite I can use less cleaning on the balance control and keep the heat out of my tungsten. I also run 120hz on the thinner materials (1/8") but stay at 80hz for just about everything else over that thickness. Now if I was doing a thick casting, then I may go lower turning it down to 50hz and use 25% helium 75% argon mix. The helium really helps and makes the 280 feel like a much bigger machine. It acts almost like a 350 on stright argon. Sometimes I even use the 25% helium mix on thinner stuff as well. I can cut the amps back by 30% and it still welds hot. Something about it really helps clean the puddle up and gives you a nice clean looking weld. I used to have a HTP 200 and you just about had to run mixed gas to do 1/4" material with it do to running out of amperage. It would do good with your 210 in the field if on a 120v extension cord and you could get a small 80cf bottle of 25%he to carry remotely.
The newer inverter machines have so many settings it is amazing what you can do with them. I also have a Lincoln tig 300/300 (375 amp) HF machine. There is no balance no frequency controls just basic 60 hz but you can really throw the heat on thicker materials. It dose a good job and is a tank at 800lbs. The more I play with the bells and whistles of the new dynasty's the more I like them though.

[Ulf]

A lil late to this party, wondering what the dimensions are of the new console your going with.

I’m looking for a smaller console than the big one that came from the factory on my ‘74 SF