Hello to the forum! I've owned the 1974 Mako 15 with '96 Johnson 50 pictured below for about 7 months now. This little beast has been ridden hard and put up wet (wet-slipped) for the past six months until she was trailered home after thanksgiving. She has (pics in order) soft floors, a bad transom, a strange hull crack on the keel just behind the bow, and potential prior trailering accident damage at the port transom cap.
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We got her ("Water-Ready!") on a Saturday morning for a good deal after randomly getting the boat itch while drinking Friday night. In my excitement, I almost sank her when the wife and I put her in to bring her to the canal out back of the house. I forgot the bilge plug, even though I grew with a boat... When I realized my mistake, and had water coming out of the bilge hatch, I throttled up and cranked the wheel to get to shore; the steering cable metal end clamp split at the tilt tube and the cable pig-tailed out while sinking! I hand-steered the engine to beach her on shore (with the wife working the throttle) only to find that the bilge pump was wired with household twist-on connectors and non-functional). I had to macgyver the bilge plug in with a random washer as a flat head, hot-wire the bilge while standing in the water next to the boat, then fish the steering cable back into the cable while using the same washer to tighten a strap screw-clamp to make up the split metal steering cable end clamp. We made it back home to the seawall; realizing on the flats along the way that the TT motor brushes were dirty and functioned at-will.
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I have installed a new steering cable, helm, and SS wheel, a new dual battery setup with seperate house/motor/parallel switch and new electronics, a stereo with amp and speakers, bought and installed a used TT assembly, engine bracket, and new tilt tube, and I've rebuilt the carbs (twice, this old 2T dies at idle, but run's like a bat out of hell at WOT). Thinking this 50 will blow up, I purchased a '89 Rude 70 that I'm rebuilding at .030 over to replace the 50. I'm about to begin a rebuild on this beast, but I haven't seen a full 15 rebuild thread.
id="left">That being said, I'm hoping to be able to piece together all of the information from other hulls and 15 threads on this site to provide a tutorial to others with such ambitions.
id="left">Since she is the first boat for my wife and I, her name is "The Beginning"
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