Hawaiian History Question for Ol' Rigger

[El Prosecutor]

OLD RIGGER WROTE:
But I can tell you that back in the day, there were no lines of un-happy customers come Monday morning, waiting at the gate with their boat in tow with a hurt Olds in it. At least not at the shops where I was back then, Tahiti, Hawaiian and Rogers. They ran forever. I may have been pushing it when I said 'decades' of service. . . .Oh, we had boats commng back Monday mornings to be sure, mostly at Hawaiian. But not for the reasons we're talking about here. I could write a book on the fock-ups at that shop.
I can vouch for that - my original Olds is still running like a top.
During my recent rebuild however I noticed that the intake in my '75 Hawaiian (aka Tiki) mini day cruiser is not quite straight. For my purposes I doubt if it makes much difference, but is that the kind of thing you were talking about?
Anything else I should check on? BTW, I love my Hawaiian, and all the stories about the wild days just make it more fun to own - thanks for your many contributions to the boards.
http://www.***boat.com/image_center/data/520/3252Frontside2-med.jpg

[old rigger]

A crooked intake? In a Hawaiian? Say it aint so El Pro!
I'm afraid that's a pretty common deal for a Hawaiian. Thoses riggers were buried pretty deep in boats. I didn't rig then but my dad did, and the number of riggers would go from a winter number of about 4 to a summer high of 8 of 9, I worked in the glass dept. We had some very good riggers back then, dad, Pat Murphy, Jerry Gilbreth, whos dad owned gil marine, and Jerry would later own the 19 molds from Spectra building some beautiful boats outa them called GMT, I think? He also married the heir to Del Taco. He doesn't need to mess with rigging bots now. There were some other good riggers but we had a bunch of hacks too. Now to be honest, a good rigger back then was someone that could build a boat, do a clean job with no problems and then get to the next boat. Nothing like rigging today. Of course those guys were sometimes knocking out 3 boats a day each, nothing like that exists today to compare it to. The main riggers, my dad, (who by the way never had a boat returned for a problem that was due to his rigging, ever. He was pretty poud of that) Pat and a few others, liked to keep the rigger head count low, they liked humping the boats out like that, we were all on piece work anyway and they had a pretty good rhythym to things when it was busy. No one wnated to share or teach some guy that didn't give a shit about boats, how to rig.
And rigging only meant the dash, controls, wiring, tanks and the engine/drive combo, nothing else. Seats, carpet, bowrails and all that other crap was done in another dept. called the detailers.
Remember, one of the owners was in prison over the Tahiti deal and as a favor to some of his inmates for not making him their bitch, he gave them jobs at the shop. It was really bad for a while having these cons, working during the day and then going to prison in the evenings. They'd fock off all day long, happy to be free for a while and not really give a shit about the boats. Get high, drill a hole through the side of a boat where a hole shouldn't have been drilled. Get high and screw a boat through the bottom of the boat and to the bunk pads on the trailer, ya know, everyday fun stuff like that.
It was, on the other hand, by far the most fun shop I ever worked in. We had a blast and built a TON of boats of the course of 6 or 7 years there.
My old friend Sal that owns Orange County Boat Repair is one of the best repair guys around and is most certainly the best metalflake guy too, interms of matching it to an older boat. He got his experence from fixing the employees screw-ups at Hawaiian, not the customers.
So I know there's many crooked intakes out there, including yours, but hey, if not for shops like that, what the hell would all the jet boat gurus today do for business if not for correcting our mistakes? :)
By the way, I had a 74 Spectra 20, which was supposed to be one of the finer shops back in the day, and it's intake was as crooked or worse than anything ever to come outa Tahiti or Hawaiian. It was more common than some would like you to believe.

[Ralph Brunt]

hey el were did you get that sticker in your sig ling i want one thanx ralph

[blown428fe]

hey el were did you get that sticker in your sig ling i want one thanx ralph
Dont mean to cut in, but Roostwear has the stickers.

[El Prosecutor]

Dont mean to cut in, but Roostwear has the stickers.
He's right. I don't actually have one, I just used the pic
here is the link: http://www.roostwear.com/decal.htm