Just by chance.......and it seems like I almost always get in his group every year.......Mr. Ed Miller was our tour guide today. I always enjoy talking to that man, he is a long time Ranger employee and definitely knows his way around the plant.
Here we start the tour in the place where the boat hulls get started.......gel coat.
Here is a model demonstrating how a hull is built. Many folks don't know that the very first step in building a boat if applying the very outer finish coat!
Eventually when the hull structure is completed the hull is pulled from the mold.
The back row of 4 colors are solid gel coat colors, all of the others except for the purple at the front are poly flake.......
This cup of purple stuff is actually clear coat. For areas of the boat that have poly flake applied, the outer clear coat is sprayed into the molds first. For areas that have the solid gel coat colors such as the hull bottom or the hull sides as shown on the model above, the gel does not have an outer clear.
If this is the wheel you are talking about, they are made in larger sizes.
http://www.hispecwheel.com/products/768/Series-06
- 2019 Ranger Z185 - Mercury 150 Pro XS
Spray booths. This is where the awesome starts!
A peek inside.......he is applying poly flake to a top deck mold. The clear coat has already been applied here.
In this picture the hull bottom has been sprayed, and the yellow color you see is a barrier coat that helps prevent blistering. It looks like they are getting ready to shoot the hull sides next!
Here is a 2080MS Angler hull at the same stage.......
Great thread Pete...really enjoying it!
Here is one of everybody's favorites, the RT188.......
Awesome work as usual Pete I have to take that tour sometime
2019 Ranger Z520C DC / 250 Pro XS 4 Stroke
The Ranger Icon Edition Z521L. WOW what a boat!!
I was told that they stopped using his picture (and perhaps name) last year. If they wanted to continue to use it, JM would have to pay him a retainer. And, I am sure that part of his personal contract would contain a section preventing him from endorsing a competing product. Given that he was at the recent Vexus event and was prominently featured in the publicity pictures of that event, I'd say that Forrest is currently not under contract with Ranger.
"The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it…He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard.” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments