We did some assessment on the 1971 SeaCamper's MerCruiser 165 engine yesterday. This is a Chevy inline 6 built in 1970. Our first mystery to solve was the hour meter on the dash, which appears to read 4502. I had two AI's debating each other on whether the last digit...

https://youtu.be/94oEVKPnhI8 The real work begins with our 1971 SeaCamper as we commence the interior demolition! Most of the old cabinets and fixtures are rotted, worn out or simply outdated so ALL of it has to come out. We start with the cabinets and fixtures, move...

A licensed verifier came out to the house for the trailer, then a trip to the DMV. The boat and the trailer are both in our name now, with CF numbers for the bow and a permanent plate for the trailer. Well I still hate the DMV but I’ll praise the little ol’ lady at...

We found a copy of a SeaCamper owners manual inside ours. It's not the actual manual that came with our '71, it's a photocopy of one that came from a later year model as far as we can tell. And it's a bad photocopy along with having a bunch of hand-written notes and...

Hauled out everything that wasn't SeaCamper, cleaned the interior and photographed it as found. Also read the decal on the outdrive and found it's a MerCruiser — not the OMC we'd assumed from the advertisement photos.

https://youtu.be/LS8Yuv7FHdc We have some extensive plans for bringing this old SeaCamper back to life, which will include a total overhaul of the interior. But before we start tearing out rotted wall paneling, disintegrating cushions and just about everything else...

Wheel bearings and seals for the SeaCamper trailer: I'm placing this information here because when I was looking for it prior to going to pick up my 1971 SeaCamper, I could not find this information anywhere on the internet. I wanted to bring wheel bearings and seals...

Digitized the 1970s factory floorplan, then drew a proposed layout underneath it to argue with. Neither drawing is to scale — they're for thinking, not for cutting. The real measuring happens once the shell is empty. How the factory drew it in the 1970s: a galley...

https://youtu.be/OP98buskEg4 In Episode 1 of our SeaCamper Project series on the Horsin' Around YouTube channel, we introduce the concept of SeaCampers and Trailerable Houseboats to our audience, and take an initial walkthrough of our 1971 model, in it's initial...

Literature is Lit!

The first proper look at what we'd bought. The boat is almost entirely factory-original, which is the finding everything since has been built on.

Towed it home from Idaho to Southern California. A wheel hub overheated on the first leg out of Boise and we rebuilt that corner in a NAPA parking lot, which is roughly what you should expect from a trailer that has sat for twenty-five years.

Found it on Facebook Marketplace, bought it without ever laying eyes on it, and pointed the truck at Boise.