Hi guys,

I started building a 72" vee about a week ago and have gotten a good bit finished already. I built the boat from foam first and then painted with latex paint to protect the foam from resin and then fiber glassed the hull. I will be powering it with a 49cc pocket bike engine. I have gotten most of the glassing done but have to sand it and smooth it all out still. Have the motor mounts made up and ready to mount the motor in. It's still really rough in the pictures as I still have a lot of work to do and Im learning as I go. I will post a few pics of progress.

Looks real good from my prospective. I am doing one as well using a 30cc Homelite engine. I am doing my first build as well. Not really looking for speed right now. looking for something to run and get my feet wet as the saying goes.

John

Thanks and yeah same here.
I finished mounting the engine and hooking up all the drive line last night. Now I just have to put the radio stuff in, mount the fuel tank, and finish the exhaust. Hoping to give it a test run this weekend. I need to figure out if there is some kind of epoxy that I can use on the exhaust though because I dont have a welder and im trying to fab something up.

Have you every tried JB WELD?

I wish I could use jb weld. That stuff works awsome! But it cant handel the heat of an exhaust. You have to use a epoxy made to withstand that kind of heat. I found something at Orielys auto parts that is supposed to be used for exhaust and used it. It is dry now and I covered one end of the pipe and blew hard on the other and couldnt find any leaks. But im worried that it wont hold because it feels much more brittel than jb weld. I can take a screwdriver and scratch on the epoxy and it crumbles off in little pieces like sand. Hopefully it will hold. If not its back to the drawing board. I wish I could find something like jb weld that could withstand the heat beause that would be perfect.

Well got to run it for the first time today....er actually tonight lol at about 9PM. Partked at the waters edge and used my headlights to watch it. Pretty good first run I think. I need to get a longer servo horn or something to turn a little bit sharper because it makes pretty wide turn right now, Had some small leaks around some of the screws in the rear so gotta fix that. The only real think I could see is that after getting up a little speed the boat wants to wobble from side to side pretty badly so gonna have to find a fix for that. What do I need to fix that? The little trim tabs I see people putting on the bottem edges on the rear? Or do I need some kind of fins? The engine ran really well and starts right up. I still have to rig up the electric start so that I can start it on the controller. I will do that tomarrow I think. I have the ideling set with the throttel servo trim so that I can push back like applying breaks and kill the engine. Its a 3 chan controler so I can use the 3rd channel to rig up the electric start. Gonna be pretty sweet. Here is a short vid of when we first got it together and fired it up.

The vid is great. Must feel good to get that far with minimal problems. Can't wait to see it finished and running on water.

Thanks Jhzman,
Yeah its pretty great, im learning that's for shure. Got all the leaks fixed and I think the swaying side to side may have been that I had the trim on the prop kicked town a little to much. Was going to test it yesterday but I gave it a bit of a rev out of the water to test everything and bent the flex shaft tubing,that called it to pull from the transom a little bit and leak water in. The prop was still turning smoothly but I didn't want to run it that way and cause any problems. Im thinking that this could have been caused by a slightly imperfect alignment with the flex shaft into the adapter that I made. I think at a higher rpm it was causing some vibration and that may have caused it. I will have to try and figure something else out to work for this. After I get all this bugs worked out and get the fiber glassing finished and some paint put on! Here is a short vid of how I can start and shut the engine down by remote.
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Pretty cool!!!!