Tiger Tamer

A small update and no pic's. I took the car back to the engine tuner nearly a month ago. The plan was for the auto sparky to go over the Hillman wiring first to make sure I had not made any horrendous mistakes when removing the control box etc. Auto sparkies seem to be a dying breed as a lot of businesses seem to have disappeared in the last 10 years. Anyway I received an email today from the tuner saying the sparky still hasn't had a look at it, but they decided to start it anyway since the Honda engines loom is mainly separate from the Hillman loom. It started and ran for a short period of time. Seems there is an issue with a cam sensor (which is now at the back of the engine near the firewall ) which makes it cut out after a short run. So they are trying to sort that. But they could get it to run for a short time more than once and the engine seems ok without any horrible sounds. So hopefully the over machined bellhousing putting too much pressure on the crank thrust has not damaged it.

So, the Mahogany got cut up for the transom and bow stem mainly. Then there was a whole lot of glueing and clamping going on. To do the bow stem I had 14 75x3mm strips cut up and laminated to shape on a jig I made. I do have a pic but it won't download for some reason. Anyway, I have a pic of the shaped bow stem. The plans give you the basic bevel shape and then you fine tune with strip planks it once it is mounted to the strong back. I still have to do the bevel on the transom as the inside face is larger than the outside face and the bevel angle changes as it goes around the curve. So a couple of pics.

I bought some timber, sorry lumber. I found some American White oak and some Saple Mahogany locally. At first I looked at the 5m length of Mahogany 5m x 270x48mm like a bar of gold thinking it would be a similar price. It was not that bad at $100.00 per meter and when you put into the cost of building the boat it doesn't make that much difference really and the beauty of it varnished makes it well worth the extra expense. I can see I will need to buy another length as well. Anyway, the white oak was rough sawn so I had to run it through the thicknesser down to 7/8" to make up the keel timbers and the floor timbers. I now need to set up the floor timbers onto the molds and do a bit of shaping so the planking sits nice and flush to them. I am not getting a huge amount of hours on it at the moment as I am also putting up a double kitset carport to house the power boat that has been kicked out of the shed now. it's also wooden so I want it kept undercover. A couple of pic's.

No I didn't talk to Brendon about it as I bought the bellhousing 5 years ago and we only discovered the issue recently when we were getting ready to start it, so I just made up a spacer. I have no problem with Niteparts or Brendan because I am sure he has helped me out with the correct parts when needed in the past and was great to deal with. When I had the car at the tuners for the initial ecu download and start, and it started to slow right down when trying to turn it over, it was one of the first things he said could be the problem. They have found that some of the locally made bellhousings have been over machined and putting strain on the crank thrust. In my case he was right. Hopefully no damage done.

The bell housing I bought for the Honda K20a to a Toyota R151 gearbox for the Hillman Minx project was from Niteparts. It had been over machined and loaded up the crank thrust bearing. I had to make up a spacer that went between the box and bell housing. It would pay to check it. Might not have anything to do with Niteparts themselves but may be made from the same place.

The next stage done. Shape transferred to the 12mm chipboard and set up on the strongback and braced. It's now time to start building the boat. First thing to do is build the Stem, inner Keel and Transom. I am waiting on pricing of lumber (American boat so you have to say lumber) and on the plans it comes in sizes like this 4/4 x 4"x 12' or 6/4 x 4" x 14'. The foot and inches was easy enough but the 4/4 had me scratching my head for a while. 4/4 means 4 quarters or 1" rough sawn and 6/4 is 1 1/2 rough sawn.

All the mold pattens cut out in MDF in half's. The strong back built and the inner bow stem pattern marked out. I also started cutting the planking strips. Since I have to cut a lot of them, I needed to find a way to set up the bench saw with a couple of guides to make the task as time efficient as I can. I cut the first five out of a shorter length to work it out. They are only about 2m and the long lengths I have are 5m so good to practice with. Like I said earlier the strips are 25mmx 17mm but cut with a 15dg bevel on the 17mm edge. The reason I hope, is as the plank wraps around the hull the bevel will give it some lateral support for the next plank. Hard to see the 15deg bevel in the photo. The timber I am using for the planking is Paulownia. It's a very light hardwood about half the weight of pine. Then the hull will get a layer of glass cloth inside and out.

With the plans printed and studied it was time to make a start. The boat can be built in different ways, cold molding is the designer's choice but I wouldn't want to try it building it alone. You could build it with ply planking or timber planking or strip planking. Strip planking is the method of choice I am using. I am using 25mmx17mm strips edge glued over a mold. First thing is to build a base to mount the molds to and then to transfer the mold design from the plans to the molds. I decided to transfer the shape onto 3mm mdf and then to 12mm chipboard later. The plans came as full size for the mold patterns. This way I don't have to flip the paper plan over and read it inside out and punch a lot more holes through it. Didn't really need to but I did. To transfer the design onto the mdf you lay the plan out and use panel pins through the drawn lines then remove the pins and plan. Then tap the pins back in and then use a flexible batten to bend around the pins and mark it out.

I've decided to build a sailboat (can't let Damo have all the boat building fun on oldschool). Anyway (without mentioning names again) I was sent a pic of a Catboat that was a ply kitset build. No plans available for them though and the kitsets are US built. But I did like it. I had been thinking of building a sailboat again as I have built two in the past, although a long time ago now. They were both ply construction and I had some help along the way. So I started looking online for a suitable small boat to build and mainly Catboats. The reason a Catboat appeals is they only have one sail so easily sailed single handed. They are also beamy as the beam is nearly half it's length. I came across a design called the Marsh Cat 15' which ticked a lot of boxes. The only think it lacks is a small cabin but that could be added along with the build. So the plans were bought from the USA as digital and printed locally.

Sorry. I looked back and you are using a mechanical pump.

If you are using an electric pump you could wire in a switch to prime the carb (I think you are without looking back) before you hit the start button. have done that before.

Yes, the dual wall heat shrink is far superior to the heatshrink that they sell in packets. Thicker and shrinks to a greater degree as well.

I suppose if you used the soldering iron to get the wires hot enough and then pushed them into the tube quickly enough it would do the joint all by itself.

You can get these heat shrink tubes with a solder ring in them that melts as you heat shrink the tube. Don't have that much faith in them as I had one come apart, though it was the old copper wire that didn't solder probably due to the oxides on the wire. I did use some flux but the wire probably just dosen't get hot enough to make the solder stick to it. The y seem ok on new wire so far. I always put another layer of quality heat shrink over the top as well. You can also get the metal tubes in various sizes that crimp well and then heat shrink over them. jaycar have both but Temu etc will be much cheaper.

When I built it I came to the conclusion that I should have done this then. Basically treat the structure as the internal and place an external cladding on the outside and put a decent roof on as well. Windows and doors are crap as well.