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Getting back into it

Doc

Well-known member
I've posted a few times on here, so I'm still a newbie... My father gave me this hull and an old steel conduit frame when I was 12 years old, I rode it around, put a lot of miles (and a lot of frog bodies) beneath it, then we decided to rebuild the rigging when I was about 15.... Rebuilt the rigging, I rode it for another 3 years, then joined the Navy and left it to sit in the weeds at my grandmother's house..

Fast forward to June of 2007.... I decide to go get the thing. Slowly I'm getting back into it, working on it a piece at the time. At the moment, it needs a carb, (the intake looks surprisingly clean for the amount of time it's been in the woods)... The woods seem to have protected the hull quite nicely (when I went back to get it, all I could see was the little piece of breather hose on the top of the cage.... everything else was covered in grapevine)...

So here it is. These pics are from earlier this month, when I pulled the seats off to paint them. I've got a pic of it just after I stopped here from the trip back up from Lakeland I'll post, and I'll get some current pics shortly (this is, of course assuming you guys give a toss one way or another).

need....MA-SP4....Carb.....

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The more the merrier get that thing fired up. Looks like a fine little boat with good history and plenty of sentimental value to boot.

Tony
 
Hell yea we give a flip, get er dun !

Looks like an old Chicasaw hull. Im sure there were many variations of that one too.

Get er goin man !

Scotty
 
Believe it or not, it's still got a MFG sticker on it. Trail Maker Airboats. by Ken Bradbury....out of Haines City, hell it's so old Florida's still abbreviated Fla, and Haines City had an 813 area code... Bought new to replace an old balsa wood Weedhopper in....1986 I think it was?

The rigging's all Stainless Steel, built to be an exact copy of a Combee frame on a 12' Cottonmouth.. This ended up perching the driver wayyyyy out over the bow...After some adjustments, as I recall, I could plane the boat at just over an idle, and virtually no porpoising... Seems Dad'd get mad at me, because I could stab frogs on a plane, and his deepriding old cottonmouth would have to stay at a bog...

I need somebody that knows mags to go through 'em. I can do everything else, but just like Automagic transmissions, Magnetos intimidate the crap out of me.

I'll try to get some daylight pictures of the progress thus far on it. Mostly cosmetic work at this point, but it makes a world of difference.

I'm stoked, though!!!!!
 
No I don't, I havent seen a Chicasaw hull in maybe 20+ years. Sure looks like that boat though :)

Scotty
 
I know the man that made chicasaw hulls.He lives in north fl now and has one of them still. I talked to him about making them again he just laugh!
 
I talked to my old partner in the airboat manufacturing business earlier this year about trying it again and got the exact same response. In fact he is still laughing. Come to think of it, so am I. I must be demented. I may make some small parts but I'll never again manufacture boats. Too much labor, and your married to it.

I'd rather ride then make em anyday.

Scotty :wink:
 
I honestly don't know. I wasn't trying to say I knew for sure one way or the other -- for all I know, it may be a Chickasaw mold that Bradbury got hold of.. Wasn't there some sort of bedswapping like that going on with cottonmouth/gilleo/gore? Or was it just Gore/Gilleo? I dunno. Either way, here's some pictures of what it looks like so far... In this directory, for full size pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/josh.hasty/Airboat

Did the chickasaw have a splashplate on the back, or a drain trough?


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Jimmy and my dad are good friends from way back my dad was a GFC officer and jimmy was a out law chase him at night and friends in the day just doing his job!!!! Jimmy still has an old yeller hull and a 150 lyc in the barn.
 
Beau Rushing":491tqu4k said:
Jimmy and my dad are good friends from way back my dad was a GFC officer and jimmy was a out law chase him at night and friends in the day just doing his job!!!! Jimmy still has an old yeller hull and a 150 lyc in the barn.

I know where there's an old yeller and a 150 lyc in Keysville.... Good looking boat.

Loved them old grasshoppers.
 
Hey Doc, Beau sez north florida, Keysville is in mid florida or maybe north central. :lol: :wink: I would like to get in touch with Jimmy anyhow.
 
R L Williams":huhtsj04 said:
Hey Doc, Beau sez north florida, Keysville is in mid florida or maybe north central. :lol: :wink: I would like to get in touch with Jimmy anyhow.

Yup. I live in Jacksonville now, but I'm originally from Lakeland...(Springhead, to be specific, which is technically in Plant City...) There's an old Cottonmouth hull half painted Maroon floating around down there somewhere that belonged to my father.. -DG is the hull number...

The Grasshopper/yeller hull I'm talking about belongs/ed to my Uncle, he still lives over in Keysville off of Link road...He also had a black hull with a o-470 Conty GPU on it, but he couldn't even park it on the hill... Heaviest boat in the world besides an Aircat, but I can't remember the manufacturer....

We all grew up, three generations of us, at Lake Kissimee on the weekends/holidays... We had the 5th from last, and 2nd from last house between the canal and the lake at the Rocks camp, the the last house and third from last house on the point west of Shady Oaks (just before the three trailers in the middle of nowhere the Gator Tile guy used to own)....

Sounds like a history lesson, I know, but we used to run with a bunch of people that I haven't seen in 10-15 years, but would recognize us from where we lived/rode.....
 
R L Williams I called jimmy the outher night about the motor and his boy is going to build it and his cousin is taking the hull and making a mold out of it!
 
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