FishnMachine

Thanks for all of the replies. Unfortunately, the factory benches were already gone when I got the boat. What I ended up doing was eyeballing level from when I floated it. I am keeping all the bracing going off this level line. It is somewhat a shot in the dark, but we will see what happens. The nice thing about using wood is if it is not acceptable when finished, I can just replace the legs with shorter or longer ones as needed.

Thanks for the reply. After 6 hours of messing around with it, I found that the tube was bent, just a little bit. This prevented the tube from going in straight and properly seated. Once I tweaked the tube a little bit, it kind of "snapped" into the power head. Then the rest was easy. Hope this helps anyone else trying to accomplish this for the first time.

Hi, I just replaced the impeller on my 7.5 gamefisher (217.586753) but am having problems re-installing the drive shaft and water tube. How the heck do you get both of them to line up? I can get the drive shaft by itself, but whenever I put the water tube in, it will not go in all the way. Is there an O-ring at the top of the tube that should hold the tube in place while sliding the bottom into the water pump housing? Everytime I get the tube into place, it just fits loose and kind of sits there. This is the last bit I need to finish before finally being able to hit the water. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks. P.S. - much easier working with the engine sitting upside down on the ground. Feeding the shaft down instead of trying to hold it up saves on the back.

Howdy, I have a 14 ft shallow-v. I am adding a deck, but am having troubles on leveling it. Should I place the level accross the supports along the bottom, or should the level be placed on top of the gunwale? Once I have the boat level, keeping the deck framing is easy. How have other people leveled their boats before putting a deck in? Thanks in advance for any help.

Must first say that this forum has been more help in a short time than any other resource. Most all my questions have already been answered in previous posts. Keep up the good work! On to the question: I just bought this boat and it already had all bench seats removed. There are 2x12s' laid across where, I'm assuming, the benches were with a deck made out of 1/2 in. ply. We have already stripped paint and working on finishing it before moving to the interior. Does anyone know if these seats provide side support? I am putting a deck back in but I would like to do it right the first time. If they do provide side support, do I need to secure the sides to the supports to prevent the sides from spreading or will they only try to squeeze together? One more thing. This being a shallow V (15 in deep), how stable should it be. The original deck was about half way up. Should this be a good height or do you think that this will be too unstable. The guy I bought it from never said anything about being unstable. Thanks in advance for any advice/tips/tricks that you may have for this situation.