What's an old (vintage) boat worth?

So, What’s it Worth?

We see this question popping up so often, that it got me to thinking what would my ‘64 MFG Westfield be worth? Knowing that ‘Fair Market Value’ is determined when the seller doesn’t have to sell and the buyer doesn’t have to buy, what’s it worth?
I sniped this boat on eBay for $370.02 in usable but rough condition. “Hey Honey! I just won a boat on eBay! Uh, it’s in Elgin Illinois”
So, we make plans for a Memorial Day trip to go rescue ‘my boat’.
Installed a light weight receiver (over protest) on the wife’s prized old Maxima. Loaded up two tires and rims, brought my own trailer wiring harness to clamp onto the trailer, tools, grease and a new set of buddy bearings.
Had a great trip straight up through the heart of the country, dodging parades and celebrations along the way. Five nights of Comfort Inns/Clarion’s and dinner along the way. Phyllis said she didn’t mind the trip, but I wasn’t getting off ‘cheap’. An uneventful trip home, stopped for diner with old friends in Alabama and rolled back into Gainesville, Florida on the 6th day.
I started stripping her down. The weathered, ugly seats were the first to go, along with 500 pounds of Astro-turf. I cleaned up the ‘59 Golden Anniversary 35 horse ‘Rude and sold it for $275.00. Stored the whole thing for a year in my garage, just tinkering with things, as we were in the process of selling the house, building and moving.
Finally got back to working on her one winter after a year of so of shopping for parts and needed items and building up an inventory of things I would need. Removed all deck hardware and accessories and buffed her out. Purchased a new polisher, bowl bonnets, white and red compound, cleaner wax, paste wax, 4 cans of comet, and wore myself out of elbow grease. Dismantled all the lights and horns, cleaned, steel wooled, polished, painted cleats and rope guides. Polished out the windshield and did many other little things during the winter.
The hull had some yellowing and dock rot, which I scrubbed, bleached, sanded and applied Poli-Glow to.
I spent hours on eBay looking for a new power source and finally found my ‘68 85 hp Evinrude at a Dealer in New Jersey. $424.00 including shipping. Spent many more hours searching for the three starters ($160.00) I purchased to build one. Countless hours looking for the after market CD pack ($99.00) and many more hours building my own wiring harness out of an old Merc cable. Several bags of stainless screws and fasteners. It was along about this time that I discovered that the transom needed replacing before I hung the bigger motor. Another winter went by while I dug out the old transom from the top, preserving the skins and thru-hull fittings. New canvas cover to wrap it up until I figured out how to replace the transom. I finally discovered Nida-Core. $260.00 for materials.
I Scraped and wire brushed the TeeNee, and spent about $150.00 on paint, supplies and another bag of bolts to replace the rollers and trailer parts I had removed for painting. Installed a new tongue jack, and wired the trailer with an old Merc tilt/trim cable. I had TeeNee decals made for the trailer. Forty one bucks for a socket to fit my impact wrench so that I could get the flywheel off the motor, and do a tune-up. About a $150.00 for an engine hoist to mount the motor on the boat. Several more days of wiring fun to build my boat harness and get everything situated the way I wanted it.
Along the way, repaired and painted the steering wheel, cleaned and painted the Evinrude Simplex controls and countless other little projects. I have probably went through 6 bottles of spray wax, to help preserve all the work I did in buffing her out.
Now I still need carpet, seats, steering cable and probably several other incidentals. Maybe another $700.00.
I will also want to paint the motor if it runs out well.
Thanks to Peter (in Denver) I have my NOS baby moons, and huge thanks to Scott (Chinewalker), Bruce Hammet and others for coming up with needed parts for me. Thanks to everyone on the Fiberglassics forum and the old MFG site for the info and motivation.
So, that brings us back to “What’s she Worth” after 5 years of tinkering, rainy day work and countless delays for one reason or another?
The fact is, no one would pay what the boat is worth to me, or what I have invested in it.
So, does that make it priceless or worthless?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Bill

“What is a ‘59 Chevy El Camino worth?”
“Would that me this car or that car?”

POURABLE TRANSOM REPAIR

1964 MFG
Pourable Transom Repair
paragonfl2@aol.com

I had purchased this boat several years ago and spent quite a bit of
time polishing and buffing before I realized I would have to replace
the transom. It seemed solid at first, but anticipating installing a
larger motor, I wanted to be certain of it's soundness. I removed the
aluminum cap or extrusion and drilled some test holes into the core.
The bit brought up water and mush!

I knew I did not have the skill to replace the wooden core inside this curved transom, so I began
looking at alternate methods. I found a product called Seacast and read several articles and
talked to people who had used it. I even obtained some left over material from a friend and
did a simple repair on a small john boat transom. I was not happy with the results and decided
not to pursue this avenue for my boat.

While searching the internet one day, I found a product called Nida-Core and after talking to
the company and reading several 'success articles', I realized this could work for me and was
a perfect medium for the dual core radiused transoms on MFG boats.

The Seacast requires you to mix large amount of cut matting and fiberglass chips and 'stuff' it
into the transom void you have created. The Nida-Core is composed of resin and microscopic
ceramic beads. Just add hardener and pour it in as you would a heavy oil. It is self leveling, leaves no air pockets and sits up like concrete. It generates a great deal of heat during the curing
to insure a good bond to the skins.

Now, for the 'down and dirty' part of the project. You have to get all of the old core our and clean
the interior of the skins down to the fibeglass. I used a 3/8" drill bit chucked into an extension that allowed me to drill down to the bottom. I found that by drilling out the center of the core, I was able to pull out large pieces of the plywood. It just takes a lot of patience, but it works.
I know some people just use a chain saw, but I wanted to preserve my thru-hull fittings (drains)
so I took more time with it. Drill, vacuum with a shop vac attached to 1.5" hose (I used my pool hose for this) and pull out the larger pieces where possible. Once it is all cleaned out, I wrapped sandpaper around a 1x2 and scoured the insides as best as I could. I then pressure washed and
let it sit out in the sun for several days with fans on it.



On MFG's the upper corner of the transom has
'floating blocks' that just sit on top of the core.
This is just something to screw the deck to and keep the void filled out. I replaced these with
marine plywood and cut them longer so that they
come down below the ski tow eyes. I drilled the inner and bottom edges so that the Nida would flow into and "peg" these pieces.








I wanted to make sure the transom was as level and verticle as possible, so I put the trailer tongue on the ground and jacked it up as high as possible in the rear. This allowed me to level and have a solid work platform and get the transom as verticle (front to back) as possible.

I used metal duck tape to cover my motor bolt holes from the outside and plugged them from the inside with Kitty Hair and resin soaked cloth.

I draped the inner and outer skins with plastic, cleaned up the work area and prepared to pour the material. I used a clean plastic bucket and mixed 2.5 gallons at a time. this was just to make
it easier on me as I was working alone.

Everthing went perfectly! The Nida flowed into the aft area between the floor and hull and solidly filled this area. Pouring it to the top was a snap and the whole process mixing, pouring and all took less than 30 minutes. As the material began curing, it generated so much heat that I had to leave the shop. I could feel it about 2 inches forward on the sides and maybe six inches on the bottom. this means that the Nida flowed into this below floor space and gave me a much better anchor to the rest of the hull than the original transom.

The next day I cleaned everything up, used a little Kitty Hair to fill in the quarter inch or so of void I had on the front edge of the transom. (You would have to get the transom perfectly verticle to avoid this) and screwed the extrusion back on. A little scrubbing and wax, and you cannot tell the boat has been worked on. this was a must for me, as I am not a cosmetics kind of guy. Here is the end result.

You can read a more detailed account at: www.fiberglassics.com/howto/nida