My First Boat Mod...and Posting!

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mob77

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Hey Everyone

Love the site. I've gotten so many great ideas from reading about others on here who have done some amazing modifications.

I have a 14 ft aluminum with a 15 hp that I recently purchased for bass fishing and I'm now looking to do a few relatively minor modifications to it. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated....all the more so because this is my first project :)

1) Battery Placement - Given that there already alot of weight in the back part of the boat (outboard, gas, driver) I'm thinking of cutting a square hole in the top of the box section near the bow of the boat (see pic 4). Is this a good idea, weight distribution wise? Where is the most common place for battery placement on a small 14 foot boat?

2) Moving the first bench - I would like to remove the first wooden seat (the one closest to the bow)...see pic 2....and move it to the end of the boat (near the transom) for the driver. With regards to this I have a number of questions. First, will this somehow negatively affect the stability/integrity of the boat? And if not, how can I go about removing it without leaving a bunch of holes in the side of my boat. **If you refer to pics 6 and 7 in my next posting you can see that the wooden seats are fastened into the boat through the hull** Is there a relatively safe way of removing this bench without destroying my boat?

3) Installing a Deck - Finally, I would like to install a low deck that runs from the box at the bow of the boat to the beginning of the second wooden seat (hopefully I can safely remove the first seat). As you can see in pic 4 there is a ridge that runs along each side of the boat. I plan on placing untreated 2x3's along 5 to 6 inch intervals and then use 2x2's to support the deck vertically. Finally I plan on covering the frame with a sheet of 3/8" plywood. Do you think this would work ok?


I know thats alot of questions, but any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. I'll keep you all posted over the coming weeks on my progress!

Cheers!

P.S. See more pics in the next posting
 

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Here are a couple of more pics of the boat...
 

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:WELCOME:


1) I like to center heavy items in the boat.This balances the boat with 1 or 2 people.If everything is in the front and a guest is up there,it will be bow heavy.

2) Technically,you could remove the front bench an move it back.I'd leave it and build a bench out of 2x2 and plywood.Remember that treat wood causes corrosion.

3) You should be ok decking the boat as planned.
 

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