88 Saltare Rebuild

[Cooose]

I spent a few hours grinding this afternoon and was able to get the starboard side 90% done. I've just got to clean up the area where the stringers meet the transom and a small area near the mid ship drain and then will be ready to bed in the stringers on that side. Aside from being dusty, itchy, and cramped in weird positions, I was a little surprised how well it went.

My approach was to use a dremel tool with a flat cutter to take down the lip from the old stringers and then two 4.25 angle grinders. For the angle grinders I was swapping between a harbor freight and dewalt...I ended up killing the dewalt. The only issue with the HF one is that I lost the screw in handle and the head kept getting pretty hot, but it got me through the day. This evening I picked up a 7" grinder from my brother-in-law so I should be in business going forward.

The boat purchase came with 40 gallons of vinyl ester and 25yd of 1708. The resin is unopened, but has been sitting about 16 months. The label from US Composites indicates that it only has a 3 month shelf life. If I mix a batch up and it kicks off, is it good to go, or could there be problems down the road?

I was talking to a local boat builder and he indicated that he always "hangs" his boats when doing the stringers, especially when doing service work. He indicated that the bedding while in the trailer could cause issues...From what I recall, most if not all the build threads I've looked at showed folks replacing everything while the boat is on the trailer. Has anyone noticed any issues?

As far as the engine goes, I'm leaning toward getting a reman unit from CME in Johnston SC. With everything else going on, I'd rather just get a plug & play unit and hopefully see the lake this summer vs working through doing a build on the engine myself. Anyone have any opinions of CME, or reman units in general?