81' Cuddy Nautique Restoration

Hi people,
Firstly Id like to introduce my lovely Cuddy; Ive owned her since 2015, made some awesome memories and after a few years of dry storage I have finally found the time to give her a proper refresh!



She has a fresh-water cooled PCM ProBoss GT40 and 1:1 Velvet Drive which went in around 1995, some awesome fitted covers and a very substantial bunked trailer:



Anyone familiar with Southampton, UK will know the River Hamble; I worked as a yacht designer in Swanwick so that was her home, definitely the best-sounding boat on the river at the 6 knot speed limit but quite wet in the horrible Solent chop!



A simply brilliant boat and perfectly suited to the rubbish UK climate; over here nobody knows what she is and the lovely noise/wake to takes your mind off ugly Southampton..



The tricky bit as you all know is close-quarters manouvering with a single shaft; Im looking to fit a 2nd hand bow thruster when funds/eBay allows and to improve cruising Ive got a new (old stock) set of hydraulic Bennet tabs to go on. The prop is an unknown quantity so I had it refinished which cured some vibrations/straining at speed. The rudder trim tab was missing so I rebuilt it from nylon and fitted a shaft anode (plus hanging backup) to cope with the nasty brackish estuary water. Bit of a pain fitting a new coupling too but worth it.

Anyhow Ive since relocated to Devon in the much prettier UK South West and (initially) decided to tidy up her grubby bilge and scruffy wiring;



Engine and box out, bit rusty but seemed good:



The box was full of emulsion from a standing water accident (long story) which wasnt so good so that got stripped, drained and rebuilt;



This photo illustrates the typical English summer - my gazebos protecting drying paint from the expected rain blew away so I had to find several heavy items to use as anchors!

Gearbox done:



Some other bits:



Engine teardown, only needed new gaskets



And mostly rebuilt:



This weekend Ive started fiddling with the hull; tank out first:



And then the dreaded stringer check....good news is that despite some nasty rotten plywood webbing to repair it has clearly had some decent laminating work done IWO stringers and is full of pleasingly dry foam, presumably from when the engine went in.
I dont really like the engine feet sitting directly on the grp so Im folding up some s/s channels at work to make a structural subframe, more on this later Freeing up those engine mounts in situ is a job I never want to do again...



Hope this is of interest to y'all; Im a hands-on classic car fan so aim to add as much vintage class into this splendid little boat....mainly in the vain hope that my wife will want to keep it!!!

Nice looking Cuddy

Am I the only one who read this with an English accent :)
Looks great but lose the orange filter, lol

Nice project Joe! Really like it.

Joe,
    Nice project. Keep up the great work. I have a good friend that restored his family home in Sheepstor, Yelverton, Devon. I assume you are closer to the coast?

Small world - I live in Exeter which aint far from Yelverton, nice place that up on Dartmoor!

Gary S wrote: Engine is turning out nice,alot of parts to paint on one eh? Any trouble getting parts there for Ford marine V8’s? If you could- could you post pictures of the heat exchanger mounting brackets please? They are no longer available, I'd like to compare them to the non gt40 mounts. Yours is one of just 3 I know of with fresh water cooling. I like your creative painting stand for the heat exchanger- all these parts start getting heavy trying to hold them with one hand and paint with the other.

The 351W is fairly rare over here but there seems to always be one (or bits of) for sale on eBay but its the small things like correct plugs and anything PCM-specific that are tricky to find.Most US companies ship international which is ideal unless I need manifolds, engine mounts or any other big chunks of heavy iron

Gary S wrote: Thank you for those engine pictures Joe. Those are so rare they help a lot. PCM parts for the Fords can be hard to find here too, they are after all going on 20 years out of production now.

No probs Gary- are there any other pics you want while the engine is so accessible?

An update to the world's slowest restoration...

ultrarunner wrote: Any thoughts to changing to a closed-cooling system given your water? I think it's been mentioned here that about 5 years or so on a set of salt water manifolds.

Yeah that would be nice but Id probably try custom stainless manifolds first. I design motoryachts for a living so a through-hull heat exchanger would be a pain to fit on such a small curvy hull