A 76 Hondo GT comes home

[hyperpasta]

Tim.....

Sorry to hear of your loss and please accept my condolences, this has to really suck. Hang in there and continue to trudge onward through your build.

Mine build is getting close too.
Got the Ford "Dump Truck" motor in, now I'm trying to fit everything into the hull with some sort of semblance to a Dragboat. Ha!
Nice call on the Flat Black powder coating! Nice!

[Mrs.K034]

Finally got the other plates on.
Attachment 53000

It's been a really bad couple of weeks as we lost our dad recently. He got us into these flatbottoms, he raced them from the mid 60's to the mid 80's, we skied behind flatbottoms and grew up around them. This is him towards the end of his career in his Comp Flat Hondo - we're going to miss him a lot.
Attachment 53001

Sorry to hear about your loss.. But good to see you're still moving forward on something you and he both loved!!


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[OhHondoGT]

Sorry to hear about your loss.. But good to see you're still moving forward on something you and he both loved!!


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Thank you. It hasn't been easy to keep working on the boat lately because of all the memories but I keep plugging away. Hopefully he'll like it when it's finished.

[OhHondoGT]

Tim.....

Sorry to hear of your loss and please accept my condolences, this has to really suck. Hang in there and continue to trudge onward through your build.

Mine build is getting close too.
Got the Ford "Dump Truck" motor in, now I'm trying to fit everything into the hull with some sort of semblance to a Dragboat. Ha!
Nice call on the Flat Black powder coating! Nice!

Art - Sorry I haven't responded sooner and thanks for the kind words. The motor is looking great! Do you have a build thread going on here? If not you really need one, most of us only dream of putting together a brand new flat! Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

[2manymustangs]

Very sorry for your loss, I dont know how I missed that in your post... :(

Very sorry sir...

[OhHondoGT]

Very sorry for your loss, I dont know how I missed that in your post... :(

Very sorry sir...

2MM - thank you for your thoughts. You would have liked my dad, he was a Ford guy through and through. This is a pic out in front of our family cottage in the mid 70's, dads Sanger Gullwing is in the middle - it was powered by a 429SCJ. It was a great running engine.

[Sharp shooter]

I never would've guessed that the air reliefs don't extend all the way forward. Never seen this before, but I've never stuck my head under a 3/8th runner beyond the very back. The boat looks great especially the floors. You definitely have some skills!!!

[hyperpasta]

Art - Sorry I haven't responded sooner and thanks for the kind words. The motor is looking great! Do you have a build thread going on here? If not you really need one, most of us only dream of putting together a brand new flat! Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

Hi Tim,

Think I'll post a thread when I'm done. I drop a photo here or there every now and then. I need to update my website with more photos and the sort for sure. Last year I went racing with the Giroux boys and we brought home the High Point Championship for our bracket in the Lucas Oil Dragboat Series.... So my website took a major backseat to learning a bunch of new stuff and the boat has now taken on a more narrow focus. All I'm thinking about and working on is the boat now.

I think your dad, you and I would have gotten along famously seeing that you all are "Dye in the Wool" Ford guys. Just something about us underdogs that just have to work a bit harder and a bit smarter than the fellow next to us. Ha!

Keep slugging away! I'm looking forward to seeing your Hondo finished!!

Here's a sneak peek at some items I've mocked to see how thing fit, lots more work needs to be done of course....

[OhHondoGT]

I never would've guessed that the air reliefs don't extend all the way forward. Never seen this before, but I've never stuck my head under a 3/8th runner beyond the very back. The boat looks great especially the floors. You definitely have some skills!!!

Thanks SS. It would be interesting to know why Irv didn't extend the air traps further forward and the chines all the way to the transom on the XH511 but it still seems to work pretty good. Here's a pic I found recently from our racing days, you can see it ran fairly clean in it's day.

[hyperpasta]

I never would've guessed that the air reliefs don't extend all the way forward. Never seen this before, but I've never stuck my head under a 3/8th runner beyond the very back. The boat looks great especially the floors. You definitely have some skills!!!

I can't say for sure.....
but it looks like this was one of the early designs of the Runnerbottom. I can see were a couple pieces of Masonite might have been thrown in the bottom of the mold to create the hull design. Then later on a new mold was made or purpose built for the Runnerbottom design. One of the neat things about this hobby is that a lot of the history of this sport is still floating around and you can see just how designs have progressed over the decades.