Darin's H&M Intruder S Update

[Darin Jordan]

Hi Gang... I received my Intruder S yesterday, and promptly went to work making it a little more ME!

I'm doing some things that others might be interested in seeing, so I figured I'd document the updates I'm doing to it here.

The first thing I did was remove all the graphics, and all of the structure that had been added inside. Most of the epoxy just simply popped off, so getting it cleaned up wasn't really an issue... took about 1/2 hour or so of careful chipping away with an Xacto...

I would have removed the wooden battery trays to make some new ones, but they are held in with shoe-goo, and I'm afraid I'd likely do more harm than good trying to remove them... so I'll just remove the velcro, put a coat of laminating epoxy on them to seal them, and apply new velcro... they'll be fine then...

[Darin Jordan]

I'm going to laminate in some 5.7oz Carbon weave to strengthen the tunnel area and get rid of the unwanted flex... It's fitted in place, but I haven't applied the epoxy yet as I'm awaiting the answer to a question I have about how important it is to have the tunnel flat from side to side... This one is slightly curved downward... If it needs to be flat, then I'll have to do some additional work before I laminate the carbon in place...

Brian Buaas coached me on how to go about doing the carbon work, and I'm very thankful he did... This is something I've always wanted to know how to do, and, well... now I think I do! One step closer to producing my own boats...

[Ub Hauled]

That is a niiiiice hull Darin... congrats.
Nice CF work as well... good luck with your boats

Is the hull legal?

[andym]

I am watching with interest Darin, whats the secret on the CF old mate. You can tell us we won't blab!

[properchopper]

re :

I'm going to laminate in some 5.7oz Carbon weave to strengthen the tunnel area and get rid of the unwanted flex... It's fitted in place, but I haven't applied the epoxy yet as I'm awaiting the answer to a question I have about how important it is to have the tunnel flat from side to side... This one is slightly curved downward... If it needs to be flat, then I'll have to do some additional work before I laminate the carbon in place...

Brian Buaas coached me on how to go about doing the carbon work, and I'm very thankful he did... This is something I've always wanted to know how to do, and, well... now I think I do! One step closer to producing my own boats...

As always, advancing the state of the art !

[Darin Jordan]

As always, advancing the state of the art !

Thanks... but hardly "advancing" anything... Just trying to catch up to where Brian and others do things...

Is the hull legal?

The hull is 31" long... It's legal for LSO, as well as P-Offshore... unless I'm missing something... LSO is what I'm intending if for at the moment, but I'd like it to be able to double as a P-Offshore at a taveling race... One boat, two classes... one less boat to travel with...

[Darin Jordan]

Update...

Have the carbon fiber laminated down, and installed the motor mount at the same time... I've been liking these types of motor mounts from OSE... They are easy to install and work great, providing easy access to the motor and good adjustability to different hulls... I know have them in both my 1/10ths and this hull now... I had to modify it slighly, as the opening at the motor isn't quite large enough to fit around the bearing housing on the SV or BJ motors, but it just takes a couple of quick passes with a file...

I then fabbed a servo mount... I prefer a removable servo as opposed to one that is glued down so I can replace more quickly on race day if needed... Also fitted the steering arm... And yes... for those of you who noticed... I WILL be getting some shorter mounting screws for the servo mount... I didn't have any shorter round-head screws that would fit this...

Time permitting tomorrow, I'll tear it down and begin the painting process... Going to keep it kind of simple, but it'll likely fit in with the rest of my fleet... "Oberto-ized" to some degree...

[Ub Hauled]

Darin, great work!
how did you cut and bend the servo mount so neatly?
I can never get it that clean...
About the color scheme, I think we had no doubt that you were going for the jerky colors, heheheheh.

[Darin Jordan]

...how did you cut and bend the servo mount so neatly?
I can never get it that clean...

The mount is made from a piece of 90-degree aluminum angle... no bending required...

As for the paint... I've actually been thinking of maybe switching some of my future boats over to DeWalt colors... but we'll see... I kind of have a Jerky theme figured out for this one, so it'll likely go that direction...

[Darin Jordan]

Made a little headway on the Intruder over the past couple of days... Have the paint completed. I'm going to let it set for few days, then perhaps add a few decals and shoot on some clear... or maybe just put on a couple of coats of clear for now, and figure out the graphics later...

I do like the way the paint came out... I just kind of started taping and tried to let the lines of the boat guide me and this is the result...

One question I do have for you Offshore experts... Do real Offshore boats usually have the tips painted safety orange or bright red or ???, or is that just some of them??

[RayR]

Darin,

Great paint design! What kind of masking tape are you using? Stickey Mickey?

All the best,

Ray

[Steven Vaccaro]

That hull design is very sharp. What a nice job you are doing with the restoration!

[Darin Jordan]

Darin,

Great paint design! What kind of masking tape are you using? Stickey Mickey?

All the best,

Ray

Thanks guys...

Masking... For the sharp lines and outlining the windows, etc... I use some rather expensive vinyl masking tape from our local Wesco Autobody painting supply store... Same type of stuff you see them use on American Chopper when they are masking off flames, etc. on the tins... I put this down for the outlines, and then use 3M blue tape to hold the paper down and to fill in in between...

One of these days... I really would like to step it up and start painting with real automotive paint and a good spray gun, but for now, and frankly for race boats, the Krylon or Duplicolor is fine... They're going to get a little beat-up anyhow...

[Darin Jordan]

About ready to start bolting hardware on for final assembly. I'm keeping the decals kind of minimal at this point and may add some more in the future. I'm going to let it sit and cure for a few days, then I'll start the final assembly. Too bad racing season is already over for the year!

[ED66677]

Really Nice Darin!