K, KFL, Runabout, Costum Runabout, Runabout deluxe..?
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:10 pm
Hello,
The other day I wrote a long text with a lot of questions and thoughts regarding my 1956 CC Runabout. Unfortunately, the website timed out before I got to the end of my long monologue, and everything was deleted. Oh my.
Today, I'm going to give it another shot - hoping this time to be more swift on the keyboard and also perhaps keeping it a bit shorter.
The thing is, that I moved here to the US (Ohio) 3 months ago with my family. My wife does research at the university here - development of new medicine and treatment for genetically diseases. The job offer was to interesting for her to pass, so we went all-in and sold everything in Denmark. The house, the cars and worst of all the boats. Just small fiberglass boats, bot nevertheless.
Shortly after Christmas I was feeling sorry for myself, and decided to look for a smaller beat-up fishing boat suitable for Lake Erie that I could spend the winter and spring fixing up. Instead I accidentally stumbled across a 17' 1956 Chris Craft Runabout in quite a few more pieces than when it rolled off the assembly line back in the days. Long story short, I ended up buying the boat. I just sort of spoke to me - I have a feeling that some of you might know that particular feeling as well. I bought it from the wife of the elderly gentleman, whom it had belonged to for the last twenty-something years. The gentleman was midways in renovation the deck, when he suddenly wasn't able to finish the job due to health problems. He had also taken the engine out of the boat. The wife told me that the engine (as far as she knew) had been faulty and that her husband had bought another engine. As far as she recalled, it turned out that the new engine didn't fit into the boat (or for some other reason didn't fit the boat), and that it therefore had been totally dismantled in order to sell the parts for, well, spare parts.
Now, as we looked through the back barn, I discovered that there was a lot, like really a lot, of cardboard boxes, buckets, bags, you name it, where bits and pieces of the dismantled engine was hiding. I brought it all back with me, and to my surprise 95% of a Chris Craft model K engine appeared in front of me. The other engine in the back barn, the engine that wasn't taken apart, is a KFL.
I have reached out to the Mariners Museum, and asked them about what engine the boat came with. The answer was a bit surprising. It turns out, that the boat came with a K engine, but not the one I now have in my garage. At least the serial# doesn't match, but no one knows if the exhaust manifold have been switched at some point in history. Out of respect for the previous owner I don't want to get into details, but even though he is still around today, he cannot provide any information about the boat, and his wife has told me that there really is no way of knowing what her husband has bought, sold and/or thought of in the time leading up to his illness was diagnosed. He most likely wasn't in his right mind, so to speak. Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect, I'm merely telling that it is a rather large puzzle with no way of knowing if all the pieces are present.
And so, her comes the questions:
- If neither the K nor the KFL is the original engine, what engine would you then put into the boat, knowing that the boat was born with a K but that the KFL is in much better shape (I might plan to have the engine professionally rebuild anyway)?
- I have been trying to compare my runabout with other boats. I seem to come up empty handed when trying to figure out, what the difference is between a "runabout", "custom runabout", "runabout deluxe", "double cockpit forward runabout" and what have you. There seems to be some sort of discrepancy in the terms people use to characterize their vessel. My boat has hull# D-17-1083. I have seen boats with almost the same last 4 digits be called all sorts of thing. It's all rather confusing to a woodie-newbee.
- I might take the boat home with me, when/if we move back to Europe. In that process, the boat needs to get through customs. And in order for it to do so, I need to know the marked value of the boat, AND the boat + engine have to be CE certified. It's all very troublesome. The questions are therefore:
a) If I restore the boat so that it is in, let's say, 8 out of 10 condition. What would the boat then (ball park) be worth in the US?
b) have any of you got any information about anybody, who have exported a old Chris Craft - or other similar boat - to the EU and who have managed to get the engine through the emission-requirement of the CE certification? I have a nagging feeling, that the engine emission part is going to be an hard one to crack. Anybody knows what the emission from a fully rebuild 1956-ish engine looks like?
I hope that some of you out there can enlighten me a bit here. I definitely appreciate all the help I can get on this one.
Thanks for your patience!
All the best
Laurits
The other day I wrote a long text with a lot of questions and thoughts regarding my 1956 CC Runabout. Unfortunately, the website timed out before I got to the end of my long monologue, and everything was deleted. Oh my.
Today, I'm going to give it another shot - hoping this time to be more swift on the keyboard and also perhaps keeping it a bit shorter.
The thing is, that I moved here to the US (Ohio) 3 months ago with my family. My wife does research at the university here - development of new medicine and treatment for genetically diseases. The job offer was to interesting for her to pass, so we went all-in and sold everything in Denmark. The house, the cars and worst of all the boats. Just small fiberglass boats, bot nevertheless.
Shortly after Christmas I was feeling sorry for myself, and decided to look for a smaller beat-up fishing boat suitable for Lake Erie that I could spend the winter and spring fixing up. Instead I accidentally stumbled across a 17' 1956 Chris Craft Runabout in quite a few more pieces than when it rolled off the assembly line back in the days. Long story short, I ended up buying the boat. I just sort of spoke to me - I have a feeling that some of you might know that particular feeling as well. I bought it from the wife of the elderly gentleman, whom it had belonged to for the last twenty-something years. The gentleman was midways in renovation the deck, when he suddenly wasn't able to finish the job due to health problems. He had also taken the engine out of the boat. The wife told me that the engine (as far as she knew) had been faulty and that her husband had bought another engine. As far as she recalled, it turned out that the new engine didn't fit into the boat (or for some other reason didn't fit the boat), and that it therefore had been totally dismantled in order to sell the parts for, well, spare parts.
Now, as we looked through the back barn, I discovered that there was a lot, like really a lot, of cardboard boxes, buckets, bags, you name it, where bits and pieces of the dismantled engine was hiding. I brought it all back with me, and to my surprise 95% of a Chris Craft model K engine appeared in front of me. The other engine in the back barn, the engine that wasn't taken apart, is a KFL.
I have reached out to the Mariners Museum, and asked them about what engine the boat came with. The answer was a bit surprising. It turns out, that the boat came with a K engine, but not the one I now have in my garage. At least the serial# doesn't match, but no one knows if the exhaust manifold have been switched at some point in history. Out of respect for the previous owner I don't want to get into details, but even though he is still around today, he cannot provide any information about the boat, and his wife has told me that there really is no way of knowing what her husband has bought, sold and/or thought of in the time leading up to his illness was diagnosed. He most likely wasn't in his right mind, so to speak. Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect, I'm merely telling that it is a rather large puzzle with no way of knowing if all the pieces are present.
And so, her comes the questions:
- If neither the K nor the KFL is the original engine, what engine would you then put into the boat, knowing that the boat was born with a K but that the KFL is in much better shape (I might plan to have the engine professionally rebuild anyway)?
- I have been trying to compare my runabout with other boats. I seem to come up empty handed when trying to figure out, what the difference is between a "runabout", "custom runabout", "runabout deluxe", "double cockpit forward runabout" and what have you. There seems to be some sort of discrepancy in the terms people use to characterize their vessel. My boat has hull# D-17-1083. I have seen boats with almost the same last 4 digits be called all sorts of thing. It's all rather confusing to a woodie-newbee.
- I might take the boat home with me, when/if we move back to Europe. In that process, the boat needs to get through customs. And in order for it to do so, I need to know the marked value of the boat, AND the boat + engine have to be CE certified. It's all very troublesome. The questions are therefore:
a) If I restore the boat so that it is in, let's say, 8 out of 10 condition. What would the boat then (ball park) be worth in the US?
b) have any of you got any information about anybody, who have exported a old Chris Craft - or other similar boat - to the EU and who have managed to get the engine through the emission-requirement of the CE certification? I have a nagging feeling, that the engine emission part is going to be an hard one to crack. Anybody knows what the emission from a fully rebuild 1956-ish engine looks like?
I hope that some of you out there can enlighten me a bit here. I definitely appreciate all the help I can get on this one.
Thanks for your patience!
All the best
Laurits