- Location
- Windsor, Ontario
OK, so its been a massively busy last 2-3 weeks which is why I haven't posted my progress, however here it goes. My timeline is gonna be all over the place with this so bare with me 
At some point over the next week Jeff ( @BRANDO6X ) and I bolted together most of our motors and came to the horrifying conclusion that both of our squish bands were too tight thanks to us getting the cylinders decked. We obviously expected it to be tight but this was unacceptable so the off with the head(s)! Luckily a colleague at work offered to run the domes on a lathe and get the squish bands correct. We dropped off the domes and I went back to work on the hull.
Once everything had finished curing, before anything else, I decided I needed to remove the plethora of carbon death spikes from the ski. I sanded most of the ski inside and out to remove all loose carbon pieces and ground down any small bubbles in my layups and removed any tracked resin.
Now that I had a safe ski to work on again, I started making templates to reinforce the inside of the tray. If i haven't said it before.... I HATE MAKING TEMPLATES! Such a time consuming pain. Anyway, moving on. I made the templates and cut out about 6 layers per side of 5.7oz carbon to reinforce the new end caps on the bottom deck and 2 layers elsewhere in the tray. I also decided to do 1 layer of biax on the right side from the bond line up where I had cut the gunwale too low (was just going to lower the original gunwales but decided against it). I cut all the templates out of the corresponding carbon and biax and arranged them for glassing the next day.
After another 8 hours at work I went straight to the garage and started laying up the tray. (Always takes longer than you think). After laying everything up I headed home for the night and started planning for the next day.
One of next few days Jeff and I got into our motors again and installed some small parts such as the starters and sealed some areas up with 1211. Motors at this point were nearly done with just a few tweaks to do.
Back to the shop once again; after every I previously laid was cured I needed to remove all the carbon death spikes so I could start installing tubes in the tray. I spent most of a day after work sanding the inside of the tray, prepping, and gathering supplies for installing the tubes. I also trimmed the right side gunwale to match the left.
Now that it was the weekend, Jeff and I got together with the intent to finish building our motors and get them over to the shop. For once it actually worked!. We installed our machined domes and remeasured squish and installed a bunch of parts. My squish measured exactly where I wanted it, 0.04" at the cylinder wall to 0.045" at the end of the band. We finished the motors, everything torqued and sealed and ready to rock! We loaded both motors in the back of my focus and now had more horsepower in the back of my car than in the front!
The next day, now that everything was sanded and prepped, I started laying out how I wanted all the tubes in the tray to be oriented. Starting with the steering tube, I drilled a hole in the bulkhead roughly where it was originally located and lightly installed it as a space claim. I then moved onto the cooling lines, which I had decided to go up to 1/2" OD tubes (they were supposed to be stainless but had a little ordering mixup and only got 1 stainless for the trim tube). I drilled the existing cooling holes in the rear of the ski to the 1/2" Dia, routed the cooling lines through and marked where I wanted them to come through the bulkhead on the opposite side. I drilled the holes and moved onto the trim tube. I decided to have the trim tube exit into the very top left corner of the pump area and down low below the cooling lines hoping it will be easier to route the trim cable later on. Drilled the 1/2 Dia hole in both the pump area and the bulkhead and test fit. Lastly was the exhaust which I am quite pleased how it turned out. I decided to have it exit dead center of the end cap, instead of off center like I had originally planned. Pulled out the 2 1/4" hole saw and drilled the holes in both the rear of the ski and the bulkhead. I decided to do just a straight tube in the tray in the essence of saving time and getting the tray done, I plan to do a loop up above the waterline inside the engine bay with some 2 1/4" aluminum tube I cut off the exhaust and the oem rubber hose. The exhaust tube OD was slightly bigger than 2 1/4", so I used PSA 60 Grit sandpaper and stuck it around the circumference of the hole saw and used that as a sort of reamer to slowly work it out to the exact diameter of the exhaust tube. Once the exhaust tube was test fit, I placed all the tubes into the hull and marked where they needed to be cut and where they needed to be sanded at each wall. I then trimmed all the tubes to correct lengths, sanded all the spots where they would be epoxied to the hull and moved onto the ride plate inserts.
Since I had cut nearly 5 inches off the bottom and about 4 off the top, I ended up cutting off the rideplate inserts and luckily i had just enough room to use a SN rideplate. I lined up a SN plate, marked the hole locations, and drilled two 9mm holes for the bolts. Overall the rideplate inserts were kind of a pain but they worked out nicely. I picked up a set of M8 UFO mounts from @JetManiac (can't say enough good things about Chris, honestly the fact that I can order basically anything I need for the ski for the same or less price than anywhere online and have it at my door in 2 days.... mind blowing), cut a couple 1" high pieces of aluminum tube, and started shaping the bottoms of the UFO mounts to ensure the ride plate bolts were vertical. After some tweaking (bending, grinding, and hammering) I managed to get both relatively perfect. I then moved onto prep. Everything was resanded, acetoned, and blown off with a air duster (focusing on the freshly drilled holes). Now that everything was cut and prepped I was ready to get out the West Systems 610 thickened epoxy.
At some point over the next week Jeff ( @BRANDO6X ) and I bolted together most of our motors and came to the horrifying conclusion that both of our squish bands were too tight thanks to us getting the cylinders decked. We obviously expected it to be tight but this was unacceptable so the off with the head(s)! Luckily a colleague at work offered to run the domes on a lathe and get the squish bands correct. We dropped off the domes and I went back to work on the hull.
Once everything had finished curing, before anything else, I decided I needed to remove the plethora of carbon death spikes from the ski. I sanded most of the ski inside and out to remove all loose carbon pieces and ground down any small bubbles in my layups and removed any tracked resin.
Now that I had a safe ski to work on again, I started making templates to reinforce the inside of the tray. If i haven't said it before.... I HATE MAKING TEMPLATES! Such a time consuming pain. Anyway, moving on. I made the templates and cut out about 6 layers per side of 5.7oz carbon to reinforce the new end caps on the bottom deck and 2 layers elsewhere in the tray. I also decided to do 1 layer of biax on the right side from the bond line up where I had cut the gunwale too low (was just going to lower the original gunwales but decided against it). I cut all the templates out of the corresponding carbon and biax and arranged them for glassing the next day.
After another 8 hours at work I went straight to the garage and started laying up the tray. (Always takes longer than you think). After laying everything up I headed home for the night and started planning for the next day.
One of next few days Jeff and I got into our motors again and installed some small parts such as the starters and sealed some areas up with 1211. Motors at this point were nearly done with just a few tweaks to do.
Back to the shop once again; after every I previously laid was cured I needed to remove all the carbon death spikes so I could start installing tubes in the tray. I spent most of a day after work sanding the inside of the tray, prepping, and gathering supplies for installing the tubes. I also trimmed the right side gunwale to match the left.
Now that it was the weekend, Jeff and I got together with the intent to finish building our motors and get them over to the shop. For once it actually worked!. We installed our machined domes and remeasured squish and installed a bunch of parts. My squish measured exactly where I wanted it, 0.04" at the cylinder wall to 0.045" at the end of the band. We finished the motors, everything torqued and sealed and ready to rock! We loaded both motors in the back of my focus and now had more horsepower in the back of my car than in the front!
The next day, now that everything was sanded and prepped, I started laying out how I wanted all the tubes in the tray to be oriented. Starting with the steering tube, I drilled a hole in the bulkhead roughly where it was originally located and lightly installed it as a space claim. I then moved onto the cooling lines, which I had decided to go up to 1/2" OD tubes (they were supposed to be stainless but had a little ordering mixup and only got 1 stainless for the trim tube). I drilled the existing cooling holes in the rear of the ski to the 1/2" Dia, routed the cooling lines through and marked where I wanted them to come through the bulkhead on the opposite side. I drilled the holes and moved onto the trim tube. I decided to have the trim tube exit into the very top left corner of the pump area and down low below the cooling lines hoping it will be easier to route the trim cable later on. Drilled the 1/2 Dia hole in both the pump area and the bulkhead and test fit. Lastly was the exhaust which I am quite pleased how it turned out. I decided to have it exit dead center of the end cap, instead of off center like I had originally planned. Pulled out the 2 1/4" hole saw and drilled the holes in both the rear of the ski and the bulkhead. I decided to do just a straight tube in the tray in the essence of saving time and getting the tray done, I plan to do a loop up above the waterline inside the engine bay with some 2 1/4" aluminum tube I cut off the exhaust and the oem rubber hose. The exhaust tube OD was slightly bigger than 2 1/4", so I used PSA 60 Grit sandpaper and stuck it around the circumference of the hole saw and used that as a sort of reamer to slowly work it out to the exact diameter of the exhaust tube. Once the exhaust tube was test fit, I placed all the tubes into the hull and marked where they needed to be cut and where they needed to be sanded at each wall. I then trimmed all the tubes to correct lengths, sanded all the spots where they would be epoxied to the hull and moved onto the ride plate inserts.
Since I had cut nearly 5 inches off the bottom and about 4 off the top, I ended up cutting off the rideplate inserts and luckily i had just enough room to use a SN rideplate. I lined up a SN plate, marked the hole locations, and drilled two 9mm holes for the bolts. Overall the rideplate inserts were kind of a pain but they worked out nicely. I picked up a set of M8 UFO mounts from @JetManiac (can't say enough good things about Chris, honestly the fact that I can order basically anything I need for the ski for the same or less price than anywhere online and have it at my door in 2 days.... mind blowing), cut a couple 1" high pieces of aluminum tube, and started shaping the bottoms of the UFO mounts to ensure the ride plate bolts were vertical. After some tweaking (bending, grinding, and hammering) I managed to get both relatively perfect. I then moved onto prep. Everything was resanded, acetoned, and blown off with a air duster (focusing on the freshly drilled holes). Now that everything was cut and prepped I was ready to get out the West Systems 610 thickened epoxy.
Last edited:
