1977 Chris-Craft 30' Commander Sportsman Retrofitted with NOS 2005 Crusader 8.1L Marine Engines

well.... They are great engines while new. But I will say from experience, Hard parts are getting extinct. I'm still trying to locate a fuel rail for one that rusted inside.... Engines are no longer made by GM either. (The GM Bailout killed it) So it was a short lived production unlike the 454 era.

All that for 39mph?? My 31' with flybridge does 35mph top speed on original, un-modified 350Q engines. I believe the 427 version only gained three knots according to Chris Craft. The 30' is deeper-V, but still, seems like it should get more than that top speed...?

As an old gearhead, I fantasize about putting big HP engines in my 31' and getting crazy speeds, but reality appears to be less exciting. I'll stick with a couple 383s if and when the old Q engines need replacing.

The vee hull and weight of the Hunt 30 cannot be compared to the 31 or any of the regular Commanders. Same to be said of the 36, 42 and 45 Tf's that are totally different boats especially in rough seas. I agree that your 31 would perform well as currently powered. There is also no comparison of a 19' or 23' Commander Wynne hull design to to a typical Cortland Thompson glass boat.

Captains ...... This 30 Sportsman was a complete restoration from keel to windshield along with new engines . The launch day video was on DAY 1 of a multi year project and the sea trial that day was the " slowest " it will run going forward after the props are dialed in . It is a very tough call to pick the perfect prop size on a brand new boat & engine combination on Day 1 . I was there on launch day and watched the lift in and start up . This boat is drawing crowds dockside already .

Tim

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I spent many many itchy hours in this boats bilge reconstructing it.

Gobbs of oil and yuck worked it's way into the stbd inboard stringer thru some sloppy factory tabbing which ultimately also caused a lot of compromised bonding issues between it and the inner hull.

The stringer was eventually cut free from the hull cleaned out, heavily ground and retabed with copious amounts of new glass.

Lots of areas that had poor laminate compression and resin starved/ sloppy frp voids were ground out and re constructed .

The factory weep holes in the stringers were installed much too high which didn't allow for proper drainage over the years and because they were made from PVC they didn't bond well where they passed thru the stringers .

They were all removed and replaced with fiberglass tube installed to promote the best possible drainage and not to allow water to be trapped inside the stringers.

The decayed and delaminated, & oil soaked bulkhead in front of the engines was replaced with coosa composite coreing .

I upsized the new exhaust tips to 5" . Had custom glass mufflers made to my specs (simular to the ones made for my 35 express) to work with the new 8.1 engines .

I found the engines from a guy (re) repowering a 31 Bertram who was sadly dead set on hanging outboards on his boat that already had this pair of 8.1s with not even one hour of run time on them . Needles to say it was a crazy good deal on two technically NOS Crusaders!

The keel on this Sportsman was pretty badly fractured from the bulkhead going foward and had a few past failed repair attempts .

I ground the whole area out basicly paper thin and then built back the laminate and then some .

Then nearly the entire bilge got several layers of fresh glass

A couple sacrificial layers of Chopped Strand mat was applied over the structural glass which allowed me to completely grind the bilge to a nice smooth finish which was then coated with several gallons of bright hlossy white epoxy paint.

Here's a bunch of photos of my portion of this restoration.

The factory location for the sea strainers was effective but in a rather cramped location that wasn't easy to service

The bilge was just plain nasty!

The area of the hull where the struts and rudders mount was rather thin . A bunch of glass was ultimately added in this area during this project.

This pile of sloppy glass was a past failed repair attempt at addressing the fractures in the foward keel.

We cut several access points into the starboard inboard stringer to allow us to clean out all the gunk that had worked it's way inside.

Cutting the tabbing and adhesive that held the stringers in place because they were heavily compromised by contamination.

I was literally able to remove this past failed repair with my bare hands because it was installed on top of dirt as well as over seeping fractures in the keel.

It took many rounds of degreasing as oil kept leaching out for over a month

This is a cool picture I took of the inside of the hollow stringer after all the gunk was removed.

The very beginning of retabbing the inboard stbd. stringer back to the hull

Hard to see in this photo but there was a flaw from the original stringer construction that escalated into a crack over the years. This was located in the area directly below the helmstaion.

An insane amount of grinding happened in this area between both inboard stringers in the process of preparing for keel reconstruction.

Preparing an assortment of sizes of glass to be used in the countless amount of localized repairs within the orig laminate schedule . These repairs were ultimately covered up by several layers of new glass.

Here's an example of some factory laminate that that was both resin starved and poorly compacted located between the inboard and outboard port stringers under the fwd. Midship Cockpit.

Dry fitting layers of 2415 Biply in the foward bilge.

The result of laying up all that new glass in the fwd bilge.

This view is basically from the helm to the V bunk area after rebuilding the original laminate plus adding several layers of additional reinforcement.

For anyone that owns a 30 sportsman or TSF , this hull is rather vulnerable in this area as there is a lack of structure between the inboard stringers . I strongly suggest that when blocking your boat up for storage , use evenly spaced jack stands under the stringers to offset the weight that the keel blocking holds.

Sparsely spaced keel blocking which is often practiced at boat yards trying to conserve their supply jacks will likely cause stress fractures in the keel do to pressure loading .

The beginning of main bulkhead removal.

A view looking aft thru the partially missing min bulkhead.

Months and months of prep and itchy grinding!

This is the area under the starboard engine

This plastic weep hole was on the outboard stbd. Stringer at the main bulkhead. It was completely blocked with sloppy factory glass when they originally installed the battery shelf located between the outboard stringer and chine .

To the right of that weep hole is more resin starved tabbing at the base of the engine bulkhead. It had delaminted and allowed water and oil to attack the old plywood bulkhead.

I try to work as clean as possible, so as sections of the bilge got reglassed , I covered them with protective film and tape so the new laminate remained clean while we were in and out of the bilge with hundreds of feet of glass and resin in the rest of the bilge.

Here you can see the sacrificial layers of CSM laid on top of the structural glass below which allowed me to ultimatly grind the finished bilge surface smooth without removing any structural glass.

This is a section of the outboard stbd stringer all ground in preparation to fit new glass

Between inboard and outboard port stringers under where the engine lives. A lot of time went into carefully rolling out each and every layer of glass to remove bubbles and to compress the laminate being mindful to not over apply resin.

If you find yourself trying to tackle a glass job big or small, you'llneed an assortment of resin rollers.

My favorite ones are the Bodi quick change rollers.

They are very well made and unlike most other resin rollers that require the removal of screws every time you remove the head for clean up (which happens numerous times on on a big job)

These Bodi rollers simply just pull off with no tools required which is great when your hands are covered in a mixture of sticky resin and fiberglass hairs. Plus there's no worries about losing or misplacing

A screw while your under a time crunch to finish up a your repair before the resin begins to kick off!

Here's a link https://www.bodico.com/collections/fiberglass-laminating-rollers/products/quick-change-fiberglass-laminating-roller?variant=39571345244263

This is the process of making a reliable pattern for the new bulkhead.

The pattern is traced onto the Coosa and cut out.

Just like Bob Vila..... a part made to a well fitting pattern fits near perfectly on the first try!

One of literly hundreds of an example of a pocket of resin starved glass

This is the port shaft pocket where the bronze shaft log bolts to. This area was extremely thin , delminated , and cracked.

The original cast iron mufflers and surge chambers were many years past their prime . They were so badly rusted that several pounds of scale poured out of them. There were holes completely thru them too which ment that the bilge and cockpit was filled with carbon monoxide every timethe boat left the dock, not to mention exhaust water was most definitely filling the bilge .

The old glss exhaust tips themselves were resin starved , very brittle and the factory bond they were set in the hull with had separated from the transom

A view of the fwd. Side of the new composit engine bulkhead

Dry fitting the new glass to flank the aft side of the new eng bulkhead

The fully glassedaft side if the new engine bulkhead.

You can't see it in the photo ,but the underside of the cockpit floor was also heavily ground and then fully tabbed to the bulkhead which stirdyed up the floor which overhangs the bulkhead. It was previously kind of flimsy and under supported.

Plastiline was temporarily installed in the mout holes for the shaft logs

So a to notloose their exact location while I added copious amounts of new glass .

They turned out great and are now 3 times as thick !

Fitting the custom made 5" dia. mufflers.

I used basically the same exact custom mufflers I had designd by Centek for the repower of my own commander .

The difference is that in my boat (as in most other non Hunt designed Commanders) they got installed vertically. However, in order to fit on this model the have to be laid on their sides to clear the aft cockpit sole. This ment that their internal Veritone style chambers had to be reconfigured to work with the horizontal orientation.

Pulling out the original plastic weep hole tubes from the stringers was much too easy as they never bonded well to fiberglass. Because they were installed way

to high and didn't have a water tight seal , water became trapped inside the stringers.

On few occasions water spewed out as I removed the tubes

The new weep holes tubes are now glass tube that is glassed to both sides of the stringers. The holes were carefully redrilled so that the up stream side is as low as possible for the best possible drainage.

I also added extra weep tubes as well as some weep holes on the inboard sides of the stringers to allow any water that might get inside the hollow stringers out.

It's not easy being green!

Behind the scene of every glamerous boat restoration is the less than glam dusty, dirty, grimy

hard work.

drilling out the transom for the upsized exhaust diameter.

Grinding in the bilge underneath the V bunk is one of the toughest and most uncomfortable places to work but repairs were certainly needed here too !

Making new composite gas tank supports. The new aluminum tank was built with mount tabs that fasten to the stringers but we felt it would be smart to supplement the welded tank tabs so the weight of a full tank is more evenly supported.

Glassing the new 5" exhaust tips in place

The new exhaust tips and mufflers were carefully aligned with each other allowing for a slight downstream slope .

The mufflers along with exhaust surge chambers not only tame the exhaust grawl but also help reduce back flow from surges.

All cleaned up a d ready for paint

The factory built this model with a fixed floor in the cabin.

Since I had to cut out the floor to access the bilge anyway, I took the opertunity to re work the floor to include 2 removable floor boards as well as removable oak floor frames.

This makes it possible to mount a bilge pump even further foward

than the fwd bulkhead and allows access for cleaning and future service work.

Looking from the cabin aft with the new floor boards removed for painting.

A big a accomplishment it is to get to this stage!

Very few people will ever fathom the amount of hard work and time a job like this requires.

Jeremy,

Always impressed with your knowledge, ethic and skills.

Mike

Beautiful work, far better than new. My 31' was new and unsold, still at the dealership and not even prepped for sale, in 2019. And it doesn't look anything as nice as this!

These hulls just aren't engineered for speed, my shallow-V or this deep-V. I highly respect 8.1 Vortec engines for boats, they were designed for lots of torque all the way to redline. My 40' aft-cabin weighed over 22,000#, tunneled 24x24 props, with 8.1s (non-HO), it ran 37mph. I really expected a 12,300# Sportsman would be significantly faster, perhaps it will be with the right props. But I'd be in love with that boat if it couldn't break a plane, gorgeous.

@Michael Watson thanks!

@Scott Miller Thanks! Like Michael said the 30 Ray Hunt 24° deep V bottom is a radically different hull than all of the other Commanders. Inherently , a deep v bottom will outperform most other hulls in rough seas . However it's amazing offshore battle wagon handling requires much more torque and horsepower than the the modified v bottom that a 31 , 35, & 1st gen 42

In compairison , the flatter bottom of your 31 is a faster hull that burns less fuel and pushes it's engines less hard but isn't designed to be a comfortable ride at speed in rough seas.

I'll have to go back in my records of my previous boat, but it had much bigger 24x24 4-blade props turning I think 4600 RPM with 2.8:1 gears. Seems like you can get a lot more out of these engines if you can get enough bite on the water.