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Fix'n a Vixen
Part I
By Scott Hraska
It
all started a long time ago when I was about 10yrs old. My dad would always
tell me stories about the days of his HydroStream. He had a vector
with a V6 175hp Merc, which was the biggest engine made back then.
After all the stories about his HydroStream, I told myself that my first
boat would definitely be a HydroStream. From age 14 until now, age 16,
I looked on ebay  almost
everyday hoping to find a 14-15ft HydroStream. I wanted something
small because I knew I wouldn’t have the money for a high HP engine.
I finally found the HydroStream Vixen on ebay for sale. I begged my
mom to let me buy it for $1500 and I would pay her back because I have a
job.
She kept saying “no”, so I asked my father. Now he’s thinking
“cool a new toy” but he said he would have to talk to mom about
it. Finally they let me bid on the boat, HURRAY ~ I won the auction
for $1500, which included the Vixen (14ft) a 40hp 1978 Merc. and a
trailer. It seemed too good to be true. A few weeks later we
drive to Mass. to pick up the boat and all went well - well, other then the
fact that the steering was frozen so we couldn’t “test drive” the
boat.
After
we got the boat we couldn’t put it in the water because a week or two
later my grandfather passed away. So it was about 3 weeks after we got
the boat that we finally put it in  the water for its first run. I was
really excited, but that soon turned into anger. Once the engine was
in the water and the exhaust was under water you could hear a banging in the
engine. We looked at everything and it looked fine, until we shut the
engine down. My uncle grabbed the flywheel and moved it up and down
about 1 ½ inches. He turned to me and said, “unless you want to
blow the engine, put the boat on the trailer”. Well it turns out the
whole block was completely shot, the bolts on the roller bearings were
different colors from the heat and it was basically junk. After hearing
about my misfortune, my uncle Bill asked my dad if it was ok for him to give
us his 70hp Johnson/Evinrude. My dad agreed. Now I’m really
excited because I just got a 70HP engine for the HydroStream and now it
would go fast!
After
inspecting the boat I found a crack that went all the way though the
hull. The previous owner sealed it with silicone so it wouldn’t
leak. Well, after one rough outing the crack started to let water into
the boat. My father and I decided to fix the crack and not take the
risk of it spreading. Once we got the boat home and in the driveway I
started ripping everything out of the boat. First was the bench seat,
then the throttle box, steering, all the wiring and gauges, the
steering, and finally the engine. Ok, no big deal, we would just
fiberglass the crack on both sides and be back in the water in 2
weeks. Boy was I wrong! After removing the rear floor of the
boat I saw some fiberglass missing and some more fiberglass falling off of
the 2 stringers in the boat. First, we were just going to fiberglass over
them until we saw how rotted and water logged they were. After cutting
out the  front floor (which was rotted as well) I saw the fronts of the
stringers were completely rotted as well. Then I moved on to the bench
seat. I cut a hole in the middle to see what was in there and I found
another pile of rotted and falling apart wood. Within a week I had
removed both stringers, the box that the bench seat got screwed into, and
both floors. Thankfully the boat had no balsa core so that was one
thing I didn’t have to worry about. I asked Ronnie to come over and
see how we were doing. When he came we had all the paint grinded out
on the inside of the boat. I asked him to check the transom for me (I
wasn’t sure if it needed to be replaced or not) and he got a small
screwdriver out and started picking wood chips out of the transom.
Ronnie told me that if I didn’t replace the transom now I would have to in
probably a year or two. The next day I went outside and ripped the
transom out. I left the outer fiberglass layer to make it a little
easier to replace the transom. Also, when Ronnie was over he asked us
if we  were thinking of converting to center steer. My father was a
little against the idea but eventually came around to liking it. We
are hoping that it will cure the “chine walking” problem I was having
with just me alone in the boat. Finally, Ronnie suggested that we cut
out the splashwell and just fiberglass a nice concave over it to further
strengthen the transom. One thing I loved about this idea was that
there was more room to move the battery and gas tank towards the back of the
boat. So once again we got out the saw and cut the splashwell out.
By
now we were starting to realize this would take A LOT more time then just
the 2 weeks to only repair that little crack, which was now the least of our
concerns. In the next part I'll have the story and pictures of the
fiberglass work I had to do on the inside and outside.
This section
features articles written by you guys. Submit whatever you would like - as long as
it applies to HydroStreams, motors, trailers, or towing vehicles. Please send it to
me in a form where I can just insert it into this page (some kind of Word processing
document would be good). It would be a good idea to check with me first to make sure
nobody else is working on the same topic. Everyone please consider writing
an article and sharing some information that will
help out your fellow Streamers.
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