TOPIC: I captured an Albatross last week

1954 or 1955, no engine, but a straight boat. needs to have two patches on it. the original engine set up was a DIRECT DRIVE flat head 4. i'm thinking about re-doing the original set up or close but that would take a ton of fabricating parts.

the quick solution to power, WITH a transmission may be a liquid cooled motorcycle engine.

definitely a neat boat. super low serial number of 113 or 115, i forget which but the plate is there.

Love it

Great find.
Another one saved.
Neil

Nice, despite the transom mods! Would have had a 4 pot Ford 100E in it, some are modded to pre-crossflow and some even had gearboxes, rather than direct drive..The best to get is the Coventry Climax engineed version.

Enjoy and if you need parts, ebay UK has a number available at any time, I think listed this week, and some of our CMBA club members ( www.cmba-uk.com ) can help with specs and badges, burgees, bowlamps that sort of thing. Check in Internet Finds on the site for marinising bits. We have one serious expert who has a list of most boat serials and an extremely quick series 1. Just be careful that they have a finite top end, given conventional shaft angle and propellors, so overpowering I believe causes the stern to rise out the water and the bow to dig in.

Definitely worth the LONG trip you made to get her Jon, nice find! Glad to see the trailer made it home okay.

Jon you sure have come up with some interesting boats out there.

chirombo wrote:

Nice, despite the transom mods! Would have had a 4 pot Ford 100E in it, some are modded to pre-crossflow and some even had gearboxes, rather than direct drive..The best to get is the Coventry Climax engineed version.

Enjoy and if you need parts, ebay UK has a number available at any time, I think listed this week, and some of our CMBA club members ( www.cmba-uk.com ) can help with specs and badges, burgees, bowlamps that sort of thing. Check in Internet Finds on the site for marinising bits. We have one serious expert who has a list of most boat serials and an extremely quick series 1. Just be careful that they have a finite top end, given conventional shaft angle and propellors, so overpowering I believe causes the stern to rise out the water and the bow to dig in.

YES- i was lucky enough to bump into rod c. at a meet a week after i bought the boat and scrubbed his brain quite a bit on parts and possible engine combo's. coventry is too big for this boat as much as i'd love to do that.

a liquid cooled motorcycle engine might be the most cost effective way to get it back on the water in the short term but to quote a (in)famous US president, "i will not rest" until it has a flat head in it. the sound is too cool if the revs are too low.

i am very lucky that they DID NOT EVER bolt a motor to this thing once the hillbilly carving was done on the transom, no evidence of a transom board at all. there was no support network for outboard motor transom stress and i think even the back yard butchers realized that.

MarkS wrote:

Definitely worth the LONG trip you made to get her Jon, nice find! Glad to see the trailer made it home okay.

hey mark- yes the trailer did great. thanks for your help w/ that. i wound up in dalton that night, couldn't make it all the way back in one gulp!

on that custom craft trailer- balanced tires will go a LONG WAY toward taking the wobble out of it. even w/ good shocks and unbalanced tires she'll wobble. i learned that a couple trailers back......

Well done picking Rod's brains, what he doesn't know about them isn't worth knowing...He and a guy called Pete G, whom Rod may have mentioned.

Am a philistine when it comes to Albatrosses, mainly as I struggle to get comfortable in them, being tall, but they are a blast and a delight to waterski behind. They're rare your side of the pond, so hope you get it on the water soon, regardless of chosen power plant.

Nick