Super Jet I probably suck at this 'Hacked' SN build

[plaidward]

I bought this ski last year with a cracked tray, no turf or bumpers, and an exhaust manifold that was only held on by 3 bolts and not secured.
I ran it all summer like that, minus the manifolds lack of fastening and eventually broke it of coarse.

Anyway, I knew I needed to defoam at some point because of the cracks in the tray and riding it like that all summer. So, the only thing I had in January(when the teardown began) was a BOB adjustable foothold kit and that's where it began.

 

[Quinc]

Poopty for lack of pictures!

 

[plaidward]

Turns out a wrist pin keeper came loose, scored the sleeve, destroyed the piston, rings and ADA dome.
Yay!

Dome:

Here's the ski after teardown:

I started the defoaming process and found a really neat piece of aluminum under the first layer of glass. It was well adhered as you can see.... no it wasn't.

On the left in the pic above, you'll notice a single layer of glass that was draped over the non-existent foam and not connected to the aluminum sheet above it.
Lots of water:

 

[plaidward]

After defoaming, which took about 8 hours, and cutting the back off, I started test fitting the foothold panels.



I'm putting the footholds about 3 inches further forward than usual since I ride so far forward already.
This made me trim the tray sides to line up with the foothold panels.


Prior to cutting the tray sides, I was only going to shorten an inch or so, but I decided to go up to the rideplate screws, as they are so conveniently located to remove 4-5 inches off the bottom deck.



After cutting, I made a template out of plywood to follow for the floor. The plan is to lay up the floor on a flat surface, epoxy and bond it in, then do the foothold kit as per the Ski Clinic instructions.



Here's the kit panels half-ass test fitted.

 

[plaidward]

About 3 months passed and it's "holy-poop-its-already-May-I-better-get-my-ass-in-gear" time.
I knew I was rockering, but really had no idea how I wanted to go about it.
Obviously, the first thing you do when rockering is cut the top off, right? And I did that.


ha
Honestly, with the footholds forward and looking at a lot of other builds for ideas, I decided to move the pole forward 5 inches or so. Above is the start of that.
The rockering really started with removing the top deck of the nose.


Then I was like, "yeah, I'll cut this and this and do it this way and that and stick it here and there and things will work out." So, I made marks like on the right in the picture below.

I didn't get any pics in between the above picture and below... I basically made 6 cuts in the bottom deck, cut the bond rail between those 6 cuts, marked out the top deck with tape that increased in angle at every cut to hopefully follow the bend of the rocker, then cut out the area marked and jammed 2 thicknesses of the superjet's tray side(that was cut off earlier) into the rocker cuts.
I wanted to use glass as the shims, that way I can leave portions in when I fill the rocker cracks.
After cutting the rocker slits and shimming, The nose looked dumb, so I cut more off until everything lined up, then sanded to match, it finally turned out like below.

 

[plaidward]

About 3 months passed and it's "holy-poop-its-already-May-I-better-get-my-ass-in-gear" time.

lol, what's with the auto-correct? I guess 5hit is a bad word? I'll try not to use it I guess, but really?!

 

[Quinc]

Looking good so far!

 

[plaidward]

Test fitting the tank with a shortened fill tube that will fill between the pole and hood.


I then cut the hood along the natural styling line about midway up the side and removed the hood guts.



Here's a better picture of the rocker with gorilla tape holding the shims in there when I move the hull and it flexes out of place.



And here's the current state of the hull.



When I dive deeper into engine assembly, I'll give a heads up on that.

 

[lil_stewie7]

Looking good. Make sure to keep posting progress, so I can figure out how to make my SN build work

 

[CRJ]

i really like how that nose lines up with the bottom deck. I have a square im planning to cut up this winter, so ill be following!

 

[chucktor]

I'm rockering a sn right now and doing half of what u are and I've been complaining. Gotta get back in gear and buckle down. Looking good

 

[plaidward]

i really like how that nose lines up with the bottom deck. I have a square im planning to cut up this winter, so ill be following!

Yeah, I was really unsure if it would all line up, but I figured if it didn't I'd add a couple more layers of reinforcement to each side on top of the filler.

 

[plaidward]

I sanded over the weekend for several hours and removed the ribs on the inside of the engine bay before I add carbon inside to reinforce and of coarse look sweet

It's pretty poopty with all the crap going everywhere when you're sanding. I'd grind away for a good 5 minutes and then vacuum for another 5 just to see what I was removing. This was the process for about 2 hours with the hull on it's side and half my torso inside the engine bay.

On that note, I tried all kinds of different things to clean up the surface. Basically everything I used with my oscillating multi-tool didn't work well. I figured it would be great for getting around the motor mounts and the tank/waterbox mounts, but it was terrible to use. I started off using a metal grinding wheel, but it was pretty sketch. though the surface will probably grip filler and composite well.
@Parsonsjb88 tried using a flap disc on his and it was a boss, literally perfect. I think he spent like 4 hrs removing the ribs on his with my oscillating saw and the flap disc took them out in 5 minutes. lol sorry man.

Anyway, below are some current state pics of after sanding.

 

[plaidward]

Here's a pic of how much the rocker moved up from the bond rail. You can see the measurements on the side of the top deck. Those numbers were just above a piece of tape that I used to guestemate how much material to remove. then I copied the numbers on the opposite side.
I marked and measured every 4 inches from a point on the nose.

 

[Mud-Nut]

SUBSCRIBED! I've been wanting to see a build thread from you for a while now!

 

[plaidward]

SUBSCRIBED! I've been wanting to see a build thread from you for a while now!

Haha, yeah, I've been slacking. but now it's moving along pretty well, so I figured I would document it.

 

[Nate_D]

Looks really good. I especially like your rocker. Looking forward to what you do with the nose and hood. Subscribed as well


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jonner]

Lookin good, makes me want to dig into my square hull and do a rocker on it. Sub'd

 

[HiImScott]

Keep bustin ass! I want to see this thing water worthy yet this year!

 

[plaidward]

oh it will! I'm just really good at taking on more projects than I can handle