The chronicles of the Kracken.... project thread

[snikwad003]

A while back i bought the 97 challenger 1800 and saved it from a life of minimal mantaince. These will be the chronicles of its new life as the Cracken. The interior is 1/2 redone with the other 1/2 in a box waiting on me to get it ready for the water. The previous owner bought it with one rebuilt motor and one original motor. In its time with him he had a sbt reman installed when the 2nd motor went. Currently the compression on both motors is acceptable at 148/150 on the rebuilt and 135/140 on the sbt. The po had been running premix and oil injectio with tc-w3:facepalm:. So in the quest not to premix and run tc-w3 i start checking out the oil injection system and find an early style white oil pump shaft in the rebuilt motor and a broken new style black drive shaft in the sbt motor, great. I also find a burnt exhaust hose on the rebuilt motor between the water box and expansion chamber along with a melted water regulator feeding block. Except for being dirty that is all i have found wrong with the engine bay. On to the running gear The jet pumps needed wear rings, impellers, bearings, and shafts. They are currently under the knife as we speek, along with the carbs. My plan for now is get all the tc-w3 out, clean the oil tank out and replace the oil lines to the rotary valve gears, get xps in, get all old tc-w3 premix out and do a temporary oil injection delete until i can get everything straight on the shaft and run xps premix. Then i will finish the interior, add moar sound, and probably replace the cloth on the top where a mouse was hungry over the winter. Much more to come and to learn hope you enjoy my long post.

 

[snikwad003]

Not much done been stoopid busy with work. I get to go in at 7pm tomorrow instead of 8am so im pullin an all nighter. Got some cleaning done on the pilot and copilot seats
I dont have a press or access to one so i rigged up something like a "hub shark" used to press wheel bearings while the hub is on the carBoom fresh pumps. Fixin to learn how these carbs get took apart and put em back together[emoji106]

 

[Dr Honda]

Look'in good so far. Keep going, and you will be rewarded with a good running boat.

 

[snikwad003]

2 of 4 crusty ass carbs done. These are the first marine carbs Ive done and im glad to say the exploded diagarm makes it look worse than it is, still not as easy as the carb on my dirt bike but not bad at all. 2 to go.

 

[snikwad003]

Check out the crap in this one and i found a patch job on the pipe who had those discs on here? I would like to fix this correctly. Nose to the grind stone still truckin. Gonna be watin on parts with nothing to do here soon, might blast the KX arround instead tommoro[emoji41]

 

[snikwad003]

Here comes the flood of parts, cant get here fast enough, the woman has 1 more week before she is out for the summer (teacher) and she will gripe if i don't have it ready

 

[snikwad003]

Its on now, doubt ill be on the water this weekend probably next weekend. Gonna be a late night in the crackenhole

 

[snikwad003]

Didnt get much done at all this weekend and spent most of today doing funeral stuff for my womans grandma due to her passing away on thursday afternoon. New plan is to bust it all week and hope to tune carbs in this weekend. Today i got the carbs all finished ready to go on with a rebuild and new accelerator pump hoses. Some factory brackets worked perfectly to mount some 2 stroke jetski fuel filters so I bolted them on the brackets. I pulled the oil tank to clean it out, pulled the oil injection off due to a broken drive shaft in one motor so I am going to run pre mix at least until the winter then tackle that later i just want to get to the water. Tomorrow i will replace the oil lines to the rotary cavities finish getting all the tcw-3 out of the tank. I need to put all the exhaust back together, put the carbs back on put new lines on and fire it up before I put the pumps on. Lots to do. Have some fotos every one.

 

[howie099]

on that pipe plug up to you to fix that patch job looks good. They guy that does mine has aluminum always around so he makes the plugs for me. Most shops if you get it done won't need them they just use scrap they have around. The boat so far looking good. Should be good when you are done.

 

[snikwad003]

30 days in and I'm nearing the end of this session of repairs. So far I've replaced the entire fuel system except for the tank, baffle, fuel valves(replaced by po), and the carbs themselves (rebuilt them). I've also replaced the rotary valve oil lines and removed the oil injection because it was only working on one motor, I'm going to fix this this winter because my beer gut will not allow me to remove the mag cover with the motor in the boat, so pre mix this season. I've cleaned the oil tank and flushed the r/v cavities with xps with a hand pump because it had tcw-3 in it as well as the fuel tank has been drained of its tcw-3 premix and replaced with fresh xps premix. I've got one jet pump ready fully rebuilt with remaned impeller, the other pump needs another new bearing and seal cause it went in crooked on me and the shaft will not slide in. Carbs are rebuilt. Replaced beeper but still no beep. I need to fix the jet pump and re install drive line, clean raves, clean all the mess off the boat, make some block offs for the carbs so I can clean the engine bay (should have done FIRST :facepalm: ), fix leaky exhaust manifold gasket, tune carbs, put interior back in as I replace vinyl, fix trailer wiring and bearing buddy, fix stereo,. seems like the list didn't get any shorter :banghead: . I'm going to leave patch job on welch plug till another one leaks. Beer break is over :cheers: Back to it. Fotos later.

 

[snikwad003]

Got a lot done today. She is idling at 3k, seems like its running good but we will see in the water.
Got the fuel system wraped up


Oil system wrapped up


The years and years of oil is going to take a pressure washer to get clean the way I want it. But it is on the way to looking like I want it

One pump down one to go

Almost there.

 

[snikwad003]

So i realized ive been spelling Kraken wrong, good thing i didnt order a decal. 3 tanks of fuel in the pressure washer

And I'm pretty happy with the results

Waiting on some pump parts and rave gaskets so I'm going to start in on the interior panels I that came with the boat and get this mess back back together

:cheers:

 

[manolocross]

Great job! Wait until you put it in water a peg the throttle for the first time....[emoji41]

 

[snikwad003]

Not what i would call a successful night

The exploded one is the one that got crooked while pressing them in and the other got smoked while trying to get the first one out :facepalm:
I put a 3/4" ball valve from lowes in the water feed in case I return on one engine or get towed. The 3/4 pex ball valve has fittings on it that worked good with hose clamps opposed to buying fittings and threading them in and the inside diameter is just over 1/2"

I got my drivers view pissers in and hooked up


So ill order yet another bearing and head to the beach with mom. Hopefully it will be here when I get back, hope everybody stays safe for the 4th. Don't be the idiot everybody needs to watch out for on the water, and watch out for those idiots on the water, they're everywhere :cheers:

 

[snikwad003]

Great job! Wait until you put it in water a peg the throttle for the first time....[emoji41]

No doubt. Im itching to see how it does with fresh carbs and pumps!

 

[snikwad003]

I cant imagine the total PITA it would be to do the whole interior. I uncovered and pulled all the staples out of this stack of cushions

and will begin recovering them tonight.
Fortunately the PO already did about a 1/3 of the seats and gave me about another 1/3 of the covers he had already bought and the rest isnt in awfull shape but I will probably go ahead and finish it off so its all new. The kit is the one from zz auto group, seems to be pretty nice stuff but nowhere near the oe color.

 

[snikwad003]

Its been a rough week, had to buy a rebuilt jet pump off of ebay for times sake to get to the friggin water. I guess I messed up the pump when that bearing went in crooked but I tried every thing I know with no luck. Even a wheel cylinder hone

The shaft would not go but 1/2 way into the impeller side bearing from either side.

And yeah thats a brand new oem wear ring in that now useless pump :facepalm: So now we get to see a side by side comparrison of oem vs chineese wear ring on the same boat


Besides my truck going to the shop to get a new clutch, wich I hate not doing my self but I trust the guy that has it (22 years at ford now independent) to do it right while I finish this boat, the pump, and ripping off some seat covers I thought I had and dont,

looseing a fight with the grease gun,

and the gromet in the bottom of the oil tank leaking an estimated $72 into the bilge then on the ground :cuss:all else hasnt been bad. I have a slight hesitation off idle and I think it is alittle rich on the top but it comes out of the hole like a rocket with no cavitation, hickups once or twice then runs flat out with a little random skip on WOT on the stbd moror. The woman and I put it in the water for an hour or so yesterday and got the idle at 1500 and smooth with the low speeds, after they were all warmed up, put new plugs, drove the shit out of it for 5-10 min, shut it down and puled the plugs. Im sure its rich i just dont know how rich ill post plug fotos in a bit. Im pretty happy right now but far from done, accepting the fact it will never end, and ready for some interriorless lake time!

 

[BoLongo]

You got it in the water :thumbsup: It looks like I will be out next weekend, I can't wait.

Sorry to hear about all the problems, but you know we all go through it. Some days are better than others.:svengo:

A little trick I used on the grommet on the bottom of the oil tank.
I soaked it in BlueDevil Rear Mail Seal for a couple of days. Back to good as new, nice tight fit

 

[snikwad003]

Boat is running pretty good! Not perfect yet but good enough to take it to lake Gaston this weekend. The first time i took the woman out after all this work we got slammed by some thunderstorms, I did not check the weather.

We spent about an hour hanging out with these guys under a bridge because the lightning got pretty bad, a few times I didn't even get to count to one when the lightning hit before the thunder came.

I still need some carb tuning, probably with some help from somebody that has done it before. I also want to replace the carbon seal assemblies as I get some light cavitation if I hammer it from no wake. I have a few more interior pieces to do and a final scrub down and a polish, after all the mechanical stuff I'm going to spend some money on the stereo. Any 787 carb tuning experts going to be at lake Gaston in NC this weekend?

 

[snikwad003]

Boat did good this weekend at the lake until sunday until the starboard motor decided to not want to start hot and have a lean hesitation until past 3k rpms :facepalm: So the carbs are coming apart again to check pop off and get 2nd cleaning. I hope I dont need to buy a new set due to corrosion on the low speed circuits :banghead: So far I like this boat alot and I am enjoying it even through all the repairs and I see it being around for a while. I figure worst case is I drop a grand on carbs to have an entirely new fuel system and it runs good until it needs motor work then I'll rebuild the motors and keep trucking! :cheers:

 

[snikwad003]

Diving in to hunt down carb problem on stbd motor and found this

Hmmmm.....

 

[Rmcrabb]

Like like you could get a couple 2, 3, 10 more turns on that bolt!

 

[snikwad003]

Both bolts all the way out, gasket gone. I think I got lucky on this one.

 

[Rmcrabb]

Always nice to find something wrong when you have something wrong.

 

[snikwad003]

You are 100% correct on that one, way better than chasing a ghost.