I noticed this nice looking speedboat on Ebay, I thought to myself that it had some potential, especially with its sleek shape.
The item description may of put some people/bidders off, because it had no electrics and the motor was described as "not working", but at least the original gearbox drive was still in, along with the original style rudder and "Z" drive uj coupling to the prop.

First job was to remove the motor, only to find it was a "Le mans " sport motor. The bearings were a little tight, but after removing the brushes, the commutator was badly oxidised, giving the reason why it would not power up. So I carefully cleaned it up with some fine abrhasive paper, I also cleaned the drive faces of the brushes before refitting. I also lubricated the motor bearings before going any further.
I put the motor in my vice, connected up a couple of power leads to a 6v battery, not wanting to go full voltage straight away and he presto, the motor sprang in to life!

I had decided after first seeing this hull that it was crying out for a decent paint job. I have always liked the "MartinI Racing" colour scheme, so this was going to be the plan.
The many body of the hull has sanded down to remove the original paint, the upper removeable hull section was carefully sanded, not wanting to damage the splendid dash panel and its decals.
Once all was sanded down, it was given a couple of coats of primer and left to dry thoroughly.

Once the base primer was dry, time to add the base white, Halfords "appliance white" is a good base colour being such a brilliant white and fairly hard wearing too once dry too.
The hull was then masked off to apply the base colour blue for the MartinI stripes. Unfortunately a thorough search of the web Images did not exactly find my "ideal" colour scheme, so I m=ixed and matched a few Images together and came up with a scheme I thought would suit this hull shape.

Once the blue outer colour band was almost dry, the masking tape was carefully removed to allow the paint edge to bond to the underlying paint. Word of warning here, dont leave the masking on too long or you can end up tearing the edge of the new paint as you lift off the masking tape, always try to remove when it is still "touch dry", test this out on the overspray on the masking paper. When you can only "just" leave an Imprint in the paint, it is time to lift the masking off.
I then painted in [by brush] the centre red stripe, this going over the white base colour gives a nice bright red colour, but still too 2 coats to achieve an even coat.

I sourced a nice set of MartinI Racing decals off Ebay, they were originally listed for 1/10th scale r/c cars, but they are so easily adaptable for marine use too, simply dont fit any of the decals with the car names on !
A final couple of coats of clear laquer seals the decals to the paintwork and means none of the decal edges are going to lift after a few water Immersions.

When looking at secondhand boats, try to magine what it could look like , AFTER you get it home, not just how it looks with the for sale sign on. YES it means you can buy cheaper to start with if the paintwork is in real need of a refurb, but after only a few hours of work, you can end up wth a nice loking boat for not a lot of pennies.

Had Its first proper sea trials today and have to say that all went very well. It handles sharply, takes high speed turns In Its stride, choppy water Is not a problem.............. what more do you want.
I am however going to try movng the battery pack a little further forward, Its sitting at the stern at present, but going to see If a little further forward, just behind the drive motor may just lift the stern up a bI more to allow the semI surface prop to work better.