1980 Bayliner Saratoga. Restoration

[Hicks]

Okay boys here it is a 1980 Bayliner Saratoga with a 350 it's locked as of now. I got a lot of questions I'm good at cars but never had a boat this size before but always wanted one so any help or suggestions I am definitely open to. These cracks that I see I'm not sure if they're paint or what I'm assuming they are ..stringers. Are good did the Stringer test all seem to be hard solid and good to go. (Did the tap test ) Anybody done a full restoration on one of these boats not sure if I should sand it down paint it and start from scratch which is exactly what I think I need to do to make it right but any help will be helpful here .. I painted several cars in my day so I'm okay with paint or any kind of construction stuff...some pictures please address anything you can be most helpful


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[Nauti_Mike]

That's not paint but fiberglass gel coat that's cracked. There are a few folks here who have or are in doing the same and you should checkout there threads, builderdude is one that comes to mind.

[jameslee97206]

Try some Marine Tex

[HueyCrew]

What am I doing wrong? the pictures are little boxes with X's in them. Won't highlight or open

[builderdude]

Huey, the pics are no longer visible due to the crossover to the new format.

[HueyCrew]

Lots of mine met the same fate.... I'm bringing back the gloss

slowly to my 90. Polisher about beat me up till I realized the gel was worse than I knew. #600 stepped all the way through #2500 grit wet sanding by hand and with the D/A, THEN back to compounding and polishing with D/A and rotary. SLOW tedious process but I can see my reflection in the finished areas that used to be dull and chalky. Researched a few videos and did some "adaptive" shopping and came up with a

method that did really well on the textured non-skid too. Posted that with pictures ( post reformatting) in the COMPLETED PROJECTS section.

[rmitch]

On my 1980 2650 Explorer I sanded the hull from the rub rail down to the anti fouling black with 80 grit keeping the DA orbital very flat with a thick cushion on the pad. I followed by repairing the various dings, dents and cracks with 3M body filler. I used a laser to re align the boot stripe and sanded the old stripes out. I and then applied a coat of two part polyurethane (PPG aviation paint out of date} over the entire area. The gel coat was rather thick, at least 1/8 so sanding a couple of thousands off did not compromise the strength.

The first PPG shoot was a base to work out the divots from the repairs and sanding. I guide coated the surface with black lacquer to keep track of my sanding and then used 320 on the entire hull and used a flourscent tube light to show shadows as I worked. Finally, I shot three coats of "Fighting lady yellow. However, as I painted this outside, I do have one area I need to redo, but it was ready to go the the water.