It's been a while since I've been on Aldeer yet alone posted one of my projects. Had sold my house and built a new place on some acreage we had bought. Between that and working my day job, just been busy. Even with my side hustle, had been doing a lot more just general fabrication then focusing on just building boats and hadn't done a boat build in a couple summers now.

I had agreed to build this rig for a good buddy of mine about three years ago, and just now got around to it. For those not familur, before the advent of a go devil of surface drive motor, whenever somebody talked about a mudboat in South LA, this is what they were talking about, these were the originals. Inboard, running either direct drive or with a gear and can be either air cooled or liquid cooled, running closed loop keel coolers.

It has to be seen to believe what a boat like this one I'm building can go though. These bigger v8 powr3d mudboats are often hired out by duck leases to open up trailers and ditches so that they can then run 35hp surface drives though them.
This rig will be used for running a big allotment of alligator tags, hauling gear and equipment too and from a few water only camps and spraying herbicide. Havnt got to it yet, but there will be a removable dozer type blade the lifts and lowered from a winch for pushing and moving vegetation and lily's

The boats 20' long with a 2' fantail. 60" bottom at beam, tapors to 56 at stern and is 48 across three bow. 1/4" plate bottom and 3/16 sides. The keel and running gear are all made from 3/8 stainless plate. Motor is a built 5.3 chevy LS, around 350hp with a 1.25 to 1 ZF gear spinning a 14x14 hardened wheel. Boat should run in the low 50s. Been a while since I've built one, and a lot more work and figuring then the surface drive and outboard stuff I normally do, but it came back to me like ridding a bike. My day job is as a federal employee with the DOD, so I figured it ain't a bad idea to make sure I still got it if I might be calling on it to make a living again.



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