1990 180 Sport Owner

[mdowling73]

New to forum and just wanted to say hello. 3 years ago I bought a 1990 180 Sport and I have refurbished it little by little. What a great boat!

The renovation project was a long one. I had an old Regal Empress 20XL boat that I had repowered with a new Yamaha 150 HDPI back in 2004. I'll spare you the details but long story short, my dad passed and I let the boat sit way too long. In 2018 the motor might have had a total of 150 hours on it but the old boat was past the point of rescue. I tried to sell the motor but ended up finding this Wellcraft that had a bad motor on it. I bought the 1990 Sport and swapped the motors out. That propelled me into 2 years of fiberglass work, gelcoat and other renovations. Now i do projects in the winter and use the boat all summer. It has been great and I get a lot of comments on it.

I can believe I didn't find this forum before. I'm sure it would have been helpful/ Anyway if anybody is doing a similar project, I'm happy to tell you what I did. I took the console out, cleaned the tank, and I have been through this one top to bottom. I am far from finished, but it is to a point where it is fully functional and we use it every weekend.

Before

2018 - Before.jpg

Current

2020 - After but not finished.jpg

[CptBill]

Welcome Aboard, That turned out well so far, What do you have left to do?

[mdowling73]

Thanks Cpt Bill!

Always something with this one.. lol. Currently, I am working on cutting out the fiberglass seat/baitwell in front of the console. I am installing a flat panel where the cut out is and I am making space for an Rtic cooler. I bought the 65qt. I love it, but it may be too big - jury's still out on that. With the old setup, I felt like the bait well was too small anyway and it was bulky. Since I always carry two coolers, one for food and one for fish (if needed), I thought by cutting out this seat and installing a cooler with tie downs and a cushion top, it would be a better use of space and also serve as a seat I also need to replace the back rest that used to be on the front of the console. Trying to find one of those now.

Other project is these stupid plastic rod holders. Mine are in terrible shape. I actually painted them last year as a temp fix, and they are peeling - which I expected, but hoped it would buy more time than that. Thinking of building starboard inserts myself but I cant figure out what I want them to look like. Rod holders - or tackle storage etc..