Thank you Mike,

I actually prefer restoring old Classic Model Powerboats to building new ones as it’s usually more of a challenge with lots of new and different problems to try to resolve.

Bob.

Hey Bob . . .
But honestly, you've taken on a tough job!
Hats off to you, keep up the good work! 👍👍👍
Michel-C.

Javelin 2.

Getting back to the Javelin 2 that I acquired recently to restore.

With the motor and its mounting removed the engine bay is now empty, but scruffy and in need of a good clean and tidy-up.

The “wheelhouse” area has also been cleared with the tuned pipe and fuel tank removed and the rear cabin area emptied too.

With an empty hull, the inner surface of the bottom skin can be scraped clean of any glass fibre residue and other glues along with any remnants of engine mount etc that remain fixed to the skins.

I have some narrow scrapers here in the caravan that I use when scraping away the oiled finish on the decking posts and rails that I think may be safer that my usual method of using a wide wood chisel when cleaning-up the insides of old hulls.

No signs of rot or fuel soaked wood suggests that this boat was seldom (if ever) run with the Merco 61 glow engine in it.

The poor engine fixing and prop shaft alignment also suggests that the boat would not have been run for long before encountering some problems.

Checking the M5 prop shaft, it was found it to be very well lubricated with a white grease and no visible signs of wear to further support the theory that this boat did not have much use before it was abandoned.

The hull has no strakes fitted, and I am tempted to give it a initial run without any (just to compare with those that do have strakes), but strakes add so much to the looks of this design that I doubt I will be able to resist cutting some more from obechie and fitting them as the hull is restored.

Bob.

Super Rapier.

As a matter of interest, a friend of mine on another model boat forum described my Super Rapier design update as a "floating gin palace" - so presumably he thought it looked a bit "swanky".

My aim was to try to update the superstructure to look a little better "suited" to the excellent hull shape that works so well as this "pointed hull" design is now quite a current shape on many of the upmarket power boats

Bob.

Super Rapier?

Some years ago, I did design a "Super Rapier", a more up to date "racy" design that I thought would look good on the magnificent Javelin/Rapier hull.

I did this originally because the Rapier was such an ugly looking boat, but I have got used to it now and with the large strakes fitted and the wrap around wheelhouse screen I really like it and have no plans to cut the cabin off to replace it.

Rapiers are also quite rare and hard to find, but the Javelin sold much better and so there are a LOT of them around and they can be bought for very little money.

With this in mind, a nice used Javelin would make a good "donor" hull to use as a base for a Super Rapier.

I did cut a pair of cabin sides out from 4mm plywood when I first drew-up this design, so I am looking again at this possibility to see if I like the idea as much as I did back when I first thought about it?

The original full size drawing can be seen lurking behind a pair of 4mm cabin sides that were cut from it.....and alongside the new un-started Rapier kit that I was originally tempted to use for it!

Bob.

OK Will,

Let's go for it!

The target could be for us both to get a Javelin on the water this summer and meet-up to run them together.

I don't know what condition your two Javelins are in, but if you picture them here and let me know if you need a hand with anything, we can use this build log to show our progress and help each other get at least one (each !) running later this year.

Bob.

To be fair Bob, it would be good to see me get any of my boats on the water 🙄
But yes, getting one of my Javelins on the water, and have a meet to run the two together would be good.
Running alongside your Rapier would also be good for comparison too.

Will

Hi Will,

It would be good to see you with one of your two Javelins on the water one day.

Maybe when you do get one of them finished we could get together and have a "Javelin Meet" and run them together somewhere?

I would also like to bring my Rapier along to see how the Javelins perform alongside their ugly sibling 😎

Bob.

Fair play Bob, you're making great progress with the Javelin already.
Those are some pretty hefty plates, I'm not surprised it was so heavy.
Without those, the ic motor, and fuel tank etc, the conversion to brushless should make it a good bit lighter, even with the weight of a lipo battery.

The inside of the hull looks much better already, and a good bit cleaner, good progress in a short period.

I'll have to look at my Javelin, and Arrow, and see what the spray rails are like at the bow ends on those.

Will

Zooma,
That was some great eBay hunting...you really scored with her.
I check my eBay listings several times a day hoping to catch a good deal like yours.

Nevertheless, you definitely have your hands full restoring your newly acquired LesRo Javelin.
I’d honestly be afraid to take on a project like that myself, so credit where credit is due.
I sincerely admire the dedication and skill it takes to tackle a restoration of that caliber.
😎

Javelin 2. Engine mount removed from hull.

The (removed) heavy wooden engine mounting plate was pictured just before being consigned to the bin to show how little of the woven glass fibre tape had been 'wetted" to make a good secure bond to the hull.

Not having such a good bond between the motor mount and the hull was a bonus for myself as it made getting it out much easier than it could be been.

The application of the epoxy however, was much more "successful" than the glass fibre had been, as a lot of epoxy resin was smeared over all the retaining nuts and the screw and bolt heads - and this did bond very well and is taking a lot longer to remove.

I have not yet been able to remove all the epoxy that is still covering the slotted screw heads and screw threads that I will need to do before I can remove the Merco 61 safely from the heavy metal plate that it is fixed onto.

Looking at the installation of the motor, I am wondering just how much this engine could have been run as it would not have been very secure and it was not aligned very well with the prop shaft.

The driving ball on the end of the prop shaft and its mating socket attached to the engine flywheel shows no sign of wear - the black finish is still unmarked on both.

The heavy duty M5 prop shaft does not show any signs of "play" in the bearings either, and I would have expected to find badly worn bearings if a 10cc engine had been running with this set-up.

The Merco 61 is badly corroded, and just about anything else that is metal in the boat has corroded too, so maybe this Javelin was abandoned quite some time ago without actually ever being run after the Merco engine was fitted?

When I finally get the engine removed from is mounting plate, I will de-gunk it and melt the solidified castor out and the strip it and oil it to see what condition it is like inside.

I have a feeling that whoever built the boat was not the same person who "installed" the motor - possibly a new owner at a later date? The boat itself does seem to be quite solid and well made.

PICTURES.

Note the angle of the engine mounting on the heavy duty metal plate - the rear of the engine mounting lugs are not touching the surface of the steel mounting plate, but the front of the lugs are. This has the affect of "ramping-up" the mounting angle of the motor - but it does not support it very well and puts a lot of extra strain on the unsupported cast motor lugs.

The motor is not mounted centrally in the heavy duty mounting plate. Note the level of corrosion on the flywheel.

The wooden frame also had the metal mounting plate angled upwards at the rear (!) giving a second ramping-up of the wooden base plate suggesting that it was mounted at entirely the wrong angle - far too flat !

Bob.

Thanks for your tip about using Amyl Acetate to soften any glass fibre Boatshed.

I was not aware of that technique so that is something that I could try in the future.

When I restored my HP40 (that was also seized solid), I did it with heat (immersed in boiling water) to melt the dried solid castor and that worked well to free it too.

I have managed to release the steel engine mounting plate from the heavy wooden mount that it was bolted and epoxied onto.

Fortunately the surfaces that were covered in the glass fibre cloth were not prepared very well (if at all) and so the resin never really adhered to the surfaces as well as it should have done.

When I next have some spare time, I need to find a way to release the Merco 61 from the heavy steel mounting plate that it has been bolted and epoxied onto.

I was able to release the five 6mm bolts that held the steel plate onto the heavy wooden base by chipping away at the epoxy that covered the bolt heads until it flaked away enough to get a spanner on them. They were still really hard to turn, but with some extra leverage on the spanner they were all removed.

Unfortunately the slot-headed 4mm screws that are holding the engine mounting lugs will not be so easy as the 6mm hex headed bolts were to get a good grip of, but I am chopping away the epoxy coating and restoring the screw slots with a knife edge file as a starting point.

Bob.

Reading about your blog on your Lesro Javelin Merco 61 Engine.
You say that it is mounted on epoxy and you are not sure how to release it.
if it is actually fibreglass resin epoxy, then Amly Acetate would eat that away if you was
to brush some on to it over a course of a few days.
That eats fibreglass away so it should eat that way slowly.
if youndon't have any youl should be ble toget it off of of Ebay.
It's a shame, the Merco doesn't look like it was looked after.
It doesn't look like they cleaned itn after useing it here and there.

Youa lso say that the engine is seized.
If you remove the glow plug and drop some Amyl Acetate down there and leave it and also remove the exhaust and drop some in there after a while gently try turning the flywheel back and forth it should release the whole engine.
That eats through the old fuel.
I done this with one that I bought of of a boot fair and got it running.

Javelin 2. An (almost) empty hull.

The three compartments of the hull have now been "cleared" and can be cleaned up properly when the actual restoration starts.

On the front bulkhead of the engine bay a block of wood had been fixed to it to act as the rear support for the heavy engine mounting assembly.

Fortunately this had also been "glued" to the bulkhead with glass fibre resin and matting. A wood chisel was again used to chop through the matting were it joined the bulkhead and it was easily removed.

The good thing about having all this glass fibre "decorating" the inside of the engine bay was that it has kept the plywood hull underneath it relatively dry and free from being fuel soaked, so the hull is solid.

Bob.

Javelin 2. The "liquid mounted" power unit.

The "power unit" was another over-heavy lump that along with the steel weights in the rear compartment clearly revealed why this particular Javelin was such a heavy boat.

A Merco 61 was bolted onto a heavy steel mount. The motor was not mounted centrally into this mount, and it was not mounted flat ono it either! The rear of the engine mounting lugs were raised above the plate and the front of the lugs were touching it.!

The steel plate was not mounted flat onto the heavy wooden engine mounting frame either - it was also raised a the rear of end of the motor away from its wooden base.

With the motor cranked-up on its mounting plate and the mounting plate itself also cranked-up on its wooden base (presumably to achieve the correct angle to align with the prop shaft) I was not too surprised to find that the wooden base was also cranked up and not touching the bottom skins of the hull either !

The entire motor mounting assembly was smothered in epoxy and covered in glass fibre so everything must have been "floating" when the various liquids were smothered (epoxy) or poured over (glass fibre) and left to dry to hold the motor into the hull.

This is not an engine mounting method that I have ever considered, but it must have worked well enough to hold a 10cc engine in position as it turned the 50mm propeller that was fitted on the boat when I bought it.

I am not sure how I am gong to release the motor from its mount, but I have started to chip away the epoxy from the bolts that hold the steel mounting plate onto the heavy wooden base so I can grip and turn them to separate them from each other.

Bob.

BOB!!!!! Now that's a monster resto job on a super cool looking boat! Love those weights! Following this is his is going to be fun! Well done!!!!
😊😉👍

Javelin 2. Remove the Glow Motor.

The engine bay had a water-cooled glow engine in it (later found to be a Merco 61) that was bolted onto a steel plate, that was in turn bolted onto a heavy wooden frame, that was covered in glass fibre matting.

I noticed that the glass fibre matting had not been "wetted" properly when it was put over the wooden baseplate, so I started to cut around the shape of the mount with a sharp chisel and this cut through into the air pockets quite easily.

The motor was seized solid so I couldn't turn the prop shaft so I removed the propeller and replaced it with a pair of M5 nuts locked together as I needed to remove the shaft and the coupling to gain a little more space to work on removing the motor.

Using a spanner on the coupling end of the shaft and another on the pair of locked nuts I was able to slowly move the prop shaft backwards enough to remove the ball coupling away from the drive socket on the flywheel and then with a few more turns I was able to remove the shaft from the hull.

This gave me a bit more room to work with as I suspected that the glass fibre had not been bonded very well into the hull and with the edges cut away I may be able to try some leverage to work the whole motor assembly loose.

I did try to unscrew and remove the motor first, but the four engine mounting bolts and the five 6mm bolts that were holding the metal mounting plate onto the wooden base had a heavy coating of epoxy over them, so none of them could be gripped well enough to try to turn them.

As I pulled and twisted away on the engine and mount assembly, I felt some movement, and eventually after a little more chopping away with the (abused) wood chisel to slice through any remaining strands of glass fibre matting, the complete assembly was eventually twisted and torn out from the hull.

Bob.

Shame they did not strip out before posting may have save a few quid on postage. Good luck by the way
Philuk👍

Looks like you have painted the cabin areas 🤣🤣 looks like different colour big boat i have huntsman that i cant lift anymore so will need to move it on to someone picture in my harbour nice buy though be good to see when finished.
Philuk👍

Javelin 2. Remove the silencer and fuel tank from the central compartment.

The middle compartiment was quite tricky to get into as the cockpit floor is an odd tapered shape that gets wider (tighter) as it is lifted to remove it - it also only has a tack driven into it to act as something to pull it up with.

My other restored Javelin has the floor was split into two halves so that it can be lifted to gain access more easily. This is a problem that needs resolving on all LesRo Javelins - a problem that is not shared with its Rapier sibling.

Once the cabin floor was lifted it exposed the fuel tank and the silencer that were both quickly removed along with all the tubing that had become very hard and rigid with age.

Bob.

Javelin 2. Find the weights hidden in the rear compartment.

The stern of this Javelin 2 seemed to be a lot heavier than I thought it should be - especially when compared with my other Javelin - so I took a look inside the rear compartment.

A small shelf covered the rear part of this compartment and had an on/off switch mounted on it, but when it was lifted off, I could see two fairly thick pieces of rusty steel - one in each corner.

The screws holding the servos in were corroded and the radio looked like it had not seen any use for a long time, but interestingly, both servos had a servo-saver fitted onto their output shafts.

I stripped out the old Acoms receiver and servos along with the on/off switch (and the platform it was mounted on) to see how these heavy blocks of steel had been secured into the hull.

The exhaust must have been leaking towards the stern as the end of the rearmost compartment was streaked with a sticky blue/green coloured gunk that also run under the two steel weights.

As I pushed against the weights they both moved a little, and when I pulled them up I found that they had been held in placed with Blue Tac (or similar)! The adhesive had been affected by the fuel spillage/exhaust and had turned into a slippery goo.

Once the weights were removed and the "goo" was pulled out, the rear compartment was now empty - apart from the rudder shaft that I will remove next.

The two odd sized pieces of steel looked like they may have been off-cuts of gauge plate. I am not sure why the previous owner needed to weigh the boat down so heavily at the stern, but it does explain why the boat was so heavy.

Everything that was removed from the rear compartment was thrown away along with the old Acoms transmitter that was in a similar condition to the servos, but with the addition of quite a few white paint splashes. The trim controls had also seized, so I decided that it wasn't worth saving.

The rear compartment was wiped-out with some kitchen wipes, but when the hull is completely emptied it will be washed-out properly to remove all the fuel residue.

The other two compartments need to be stripped next to empty the hull.

Bob.

Javelin 2. Bow Detail.

I had a spare stand from an Alpha 1000/Inception that I had left from my recent fast electric days, so the Javelin was sat on it so that I did not have to make a new boat cradle for it straight away.

My "boat cradles" look a bit like an old orange box - not very stylish - but I make one for each hull straight away to place it on as it is being built or restored.

These rough "orange box" cradles then gain a coat of paint and become my boat stand (!) that I then use to carry the boat to and from the lake.

At the moment I want to keep working on the prototype Sprite Plus, so this lightweight boat stand will be used until I have time to bash-up something a bit more sturdy to support this old Javelin while it is being restored.

This Javelin hull certainly has plenty of paint on it - several layers - so it should have kept the inside dry, but it is also thick enough to hide any previous repairs or damage, so I am hoping that when I do get around to rubbing it down I wont find anything too amiss.

I did notice that the spray rails joined the bows in a point that extended forwards past the natural hull line - and this is something that I am not to keen on as it makes an "over-hang" that I may catch and knock-off if the restoration work gets a bit "brutal" (as it often does when stripping out an old hull), so I sanded the area to a taper to end in-line with the front of the bows rather than extending beyond it.

These spray rails had been split around the brass nails that would have been used to hold it in place, so I will take a better look at this when I have some more time to shape it better and decide then whether to replace it or fill the split with some Isopon.

No strakes had been fitted to this hull.

Strakes are a very distinctive feature on an off-shore hull that has very little else to attract the eye (not much superstructure), and they do add to the performance, so I will need to cut some suitable triangular section hardwood and fit some in due course.

......so I guess the restoration has started - albeit in a very modest way!