New project, Bass Tracker

[dc]

I purchased this boat and trailer yesterday for a price of 150.00. I thought the price was good. It has a beam of 4ft and is 15.5 long.

I am going to deck etc.

There are no bench seats in it? Has anyone decked a jon without bench seats? If so do you have pics?

Input would be appreciated. thanks

[dc]

pic

[dc]

pic

[Wyattsdad13]

The more wood you use the heavier it will be, wood on top of the alum framing is okay, but remember the plywood will soak up water like a spnoge and if you seal it, it will not escape normally and hold it longer causing rot, been there before, pressure treated wood has a chemical that will attack aluminum so dont use that, battery acid is bad for aluminum also so create a stainless steel or plastic containment for the batteries, place any wiring you may need below the floor, we added styrofoam sheet between everything to make up for seats being gone, consider load placement b4 you start, the tounge of the trailer will transfer any weight you add right to you tow vehicle, it will also take a super human to pick up the tomgue or move it around if you load too far forward, i saw a rig that badfish has and his battery weight is offset front and rear of his trailer axle, that was real smart on his part, you may want to start trying to make friends at a local sheet metal shop to have aluminum sheet cut and formed or find a scrap yard that will let you root thru the pile, ours is not friendly that way, had to go new, you will need to buy a good size box of 1/4-20 bolts about 1-1/4 long at a commercial distributer not home depot or lowes, they will rip you off, you should beat their price by at least a third, but go in with cash for the hardware and know what you need before you get there, use nylon lock nuts on the inside and apply silicone forst, use this combination to add any angle framing you may need, it will not leak. the commercial hardware place i go to has a lot of folks with saltwater boat buy from them so they are cool and very helpful as far as new advances in hardware, you may want to give them a chance to offer any knowledge they have in this area.

this was the last boat, hope to make the next one better

[dc]

thanks for the info

[done]

Well this may be 2 things I learned that I did not know. So you do NOT seal the plywood you use for the decking on a boat?  I was curious on that. What, if any, treatment do you/can you put on flooring for your boat do lengthen it's life?

[dc]

mstarr, im not real sure. You might want to as wyatts dad. I am curios also.

[done]

Dc did you see the post we had earlier on NEVER using pressure treated on a aluminum hull? It was on another thread, that was the other one I learned this week. Turns out that the chemicals in there will corrode the hull.

So I was planning on using 5/8" flooring on my Tracker 1436 but I was not sure what I could use to seal it. Hopefully Wyatt's dad will see these posts. I am really curious on that.

[Wyattsdad13]

I gave up on using any wood in my aluminum boat after much thought it seemed kinda silly to put a vunerable product in something so weatherproof. the previous projects, 2 using wood, showed me that when I sealed it, water still would get in on the edges. We fished rain or shine and had a bottom full of water more times than I can count. That wood floor sucked up so much water it was very noticable when picking the tounge up to unhook the trailer at the end of the day. So after that, I placed 2 layers of 3/4 styro between 1-1/2" tall ribs and placed aluminum of about .072 on top of that for a floor surface. I used no glue on carpet, I made strips of .050 aluminum much like they do in your house to pinch it at each edge, it was very secure and the styro foam supported the mid grade thickness aluminum just fine. I am currently putting another Electric only Resv rig together and after consulting with Badfish about the golfcart motor, we hope to have a much better setup than last time. If you dont want to use the golf cart deal, in the pictures i attached we had 4 batteries mounted in a stainless steel box where the center bench was, but it did place some weight on the tounge. We used the two 3hp 12v motors with 2 batteries goin out and two to return. I concealed the batteries by a housing that i made by spanning some braces side to side, with a large aluminum lid to cover the batteries, it made the boat really stable, our feet were down lower and made reaching for fish much safer. This time with the 36 volt setup we plan to split the batteries fore and aft of the trailer axel as I saw on Badfish's rig. That made the trailer much more balanced.

I just saw your post on the 5/8 stuff, I grew up fishing on the chesapeake bay a lot in addition to lakes and they used marine plywood down there just like any other salt water enviorment. It may be what you need to do, but I do not think I would alter it's properties with any sealer, Then again on the bay boats they paint both sides when they install it. I am not real familiar with the marine ply and if it is compatible with alum or not, I will ask around on my end tomorrow. For my purposes, I feel the marine ply would still weigh more than the alum, tend to suck up water and would not work for my application. I gotta make up for all those batteries somehow.