Chris~Craft Racing Runabout by Dumas

[vguy75]

Greetings,

my name is Jaak and I recently purchased the 1949 19' Chris~Craft Racing Runabout by Dumas. I was wondering if any of you have built this particular model or any of the other Chris~Craft (CC) kits offered by Dumas.

If so,
Have any of you experience cooling problems?
Did you install cooling?
I thinking that it would look neat to add an exhaust on the transom, in the stock location, and use that for my cooling water exit.

How does this kit measure up to the other CC kits?
It appears that Dumas went away from the double-planked hull in favour of a composite type material as the inner hull, planked with mahogany strips. Does this present any problems?

Any info/tips/suggestions you wish to share will be appreciated.

Cheers,

Jaak

[xxrewinderxx]

I have bulit a Dumas kit, the 36'' runabout and I love this boat , I would get rid of all my boats if i had to and keep this one, it is double planked and it runs better because of it, makes it heavier, which in this case is good, i have built simular kits that were single planked hulls, and they bobbed like a cork , you have to add weight and in the right places, not including the batteries, try the dumas 36'' runabout with a 700 or i run a 820 on 12 cells, with a gear drive, a good scale running boat.

[Scott Richard]

Hey vguy, About three months ago I finished the 1949 19' dumas double planked. I am currently using two exhast ports as dump outs for cooling water. I made the boat to have water pick ups directly under the boat (this would work off the force of the moving boat to push the water through), that didn't work (they have to hang off the transom to work, not very scale). So I went to small bildge pumps to force the water through. It wasn't the rate of flow I wanted, it didn't even work right! Next I had the bright Idea to have real exhast bubbles coming out of them but the bubbles stuck to the transome and didn't have enought of a scale look,(like taking a coffee straw and blowing bubbles into a cup, well hard to explain but wasn't a good look for the effort). So I decied to go back to the cooling effect, nothing like cruising along and seeing two water dumps outs. I looked in every RC store to air plane retracts pumps to old chevy winshield washer moters. I was almost at the point of giving up until one day I was walking around radio shack when I found a toy battery squirt gun. This is not the squirt gun that shoots in short spirts, it was a gun that had a consistent flow of water. Well I bought two only $10 dollars each and took them apart and installed them in my boat. THEY WORK GREAT. At dead still they actually move the boat a little from the force of the water going through the boat. My exhast is just under the water line, but at good speed they are seen dumpping out right into the wake, so cool. Have fun I hope this kit will be as much fun as it was to me. Other custom things I added was complete running lights, battery mounts, and custom brass name in the back of the transome.