1990 Saltare Floor/ Stringer Question

[ibdealing07]

Heys guys, My name is Blake Deal and I live in Cleveland, TN. Im pretty new to the forum. I want to start by saying I love reading the post on here. There is so much knowledge all crammed into one site (love it). I have a question about my Saltare but first a little background on it. I bought it last summer. It was bought new in Cleveland and has been there its whole life. It has a whopping 400 hours on it and has been mechanically perfect so far (love the 454). The boat seems to have been cared for really well aside from the neglect of buffing the hull and letting it get oxidized. I will try to post some pics. I have a million questions but I will start with the important one. Is it possible to have a 90 Saltare with a truly solid floor and good stringers? It feels very solid. I wouldnt hesitate to stomp, do jumping jacks, etc on it. I have all the carpet tore out and it looks like maybe it has already been done because the floor is black and has possibly a (line-x ) type coating. I don't think that its factory. I have all new carpet for the storage areas under the seat and Hydroturf for the rest of the floor. I honestly do not have time or the shop to rip up the floor and start all over. Is there a good way to tell if the stringers is in good shape without ripping up the flooring. I want to do it right but I work 60-70 hours a week so spending weeks redoing the stringers is not really an option (unless someone wants to volunteer to do it for me) hahaha. Any pointers, constructive critisizm welcome. Thanks

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[TitanTn]

Welcome Blake. Spend some time reading through the threads on this forum and you will learn all you every wanted (and didn't want to know) about stringers. The easiest way to test the stringer is to attempt tightening the motor mount bolts. It they spin and never tighten, you've got stringer rot. The floor itself can be very strong and it sounds like someone may have done it, but this has nothing to do with the stringers.

You've got a couple forum Saltare brothers near you. Me and Loadup are just down the road in Ooltewah. Look in the General Chat forum and the second link is a thread about the Southern Supra Reunion we're having at Harrison Bay this summer. This will be our second annual, so check out the thread and fill out the registration link if you can join us.

[ibdealing07]

Thanks for the help Titan. Glad to hear you guys are close to me. So yesterday i started at about 6:45 in the morning trying to beat the rain. I checked the motor mounts bolts and they were tight and didn't want to tighten or loosen so I hope I dodged a bullet on replacing stringers. I couldnt see much of the bildge area under the floor so I stuck my phone down there and took some pics. It actually worked pretty good. I will try to attach the pics. I started by cleaning the engine and everything else i could get to. It cleaned up really good. I wanted to get all that clean before putting down new carpet and Hydroturf. I got about 90% of the carpet ripped up. I'm going to try to finish removing the carpet and get my Hydroturf in wednesday with weather permitting. I have a good question for any Saltare owners or anyone who has a boat with about the same amount of interior. How many yards of vinyl did it take to recover the seats? I'm going to try to order some today. I think I am going to go with a light gray and add some black or yellow into it. Boat will eventually have a wrap. Any suggestions on DIY boat seats appreciated. I bought a industrial Singer sewing machine that will handle it and my fiance has been in sewing classes for 4 months now so hopefully we can tackle it.
TO DO LIST
- New Seats
- New Flooring
- New Speakers
- Continue Buffing Hull
- Redo Trailer
- Sew New Cover
- Possibly a Matte Black Wrap from Rubrail Down
- New Tower (I sold the Monster that was on it)

[ibdealing07]

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[Salty87]

damn, that's a clean looking bilge. from what i can tell, your boat isn't waterlogged. metal parts corrode more when there's a high moisture content and your parts are sparkling. the stringers near the transom are often the first to show signs but yours look really nice. if you wanted to poke further you could drill small holes in the stringers to see how the wood shavings look (seal the holes when done). rotten stringers will have dark shavings vs the clean sawdust you'd expect from good wood. they look fine from here.

not to be a monster tower basher but i'm glad you're getting a different one. what are you going to get?

[TitanTn]

Looking good! That's a good clean up job. It's hard to tell from a visual inspection, but those stringers actually look decent.

Be sure to register for the Southern Supra Reunion. You're too close to miss it!

[ibdealing07]

Yea I was really suprised at how clean everything came and I noticed some (new) looking wood under there. You can see some of it in the pics. I think i'm just going to roll with it and start making it look good. I didn't dig into it much last summer because I knew if I found alot of stuff wrong I would have parked it and not used it. It ran like a champ last summer and everything seems solid in it after digging into it yesterday so I believe my next step is new carpet and Hydroturf. I wasn't a fan of the Monster Tower either. I won't be wakeboarding much but I want a decent tower (bad knees, back,and neck at age 27) I raced motocross for 12 years. Im thinking a little more low impact crashes such as surfing. lol. What do you guys think about doing a matte color wrap from rubrail down and keeping my white with yellow stripe above the rubrail? I just want something different. I haven't decided on a tower yet. I really want a reverse arch tower but there aren't many choices unless you drop a ton of money in one.

[ibdealing07]

Thats a great looking boat and nice buff job. I actually buffed mine. Well one side anyways.lol. I grew up in a body shop so i'm pretty handy with a buffer when I find time to pick it up. I can appreciate the original look but I really just want something different. I may not do a wrap anytime soon but eventually it will happen. I guess I need to focus on the essentials considering it will be time to hit the water before we know it. I just ordered 18 yards of gray vinyl and 4 yards of black. Hopefully I can get started on the seats by the end of the week.
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[ibdealing07]

Ordered 22 yards of vinyl, Sunguard sewing thread, self retracting straps for the trailer, medium gray paint for the trailer, new buttons for hull and cover, roll of black sunbrella for a cover, roll of nylon strap to reinforce new cover, 4 new trailer tires, and new cupholders. Going to start putting in Hydroturf and carpet first thing in the morning if it isnt raining. The only thing i am lacking to have most everything I need to get it back together is speakers. I bought all new Polk Audios for it last summer but wasn't impressed so I sold them. Maybe my little 250 watt amp wasn't enough. Anyone have any suggestions on Quality/Budget 6 inch speakers for the interior. I have the 4 holes under the factory cupholders to fill plus 4 more holes in the side of the boat i'm going to put speakers in. Anyone running Fosgates?