21 ft party barge

Last year we bought a used party barge and the dealer gave me new carpet to put down. We are planning on putting it down this year. How hard is it to do? and whats a estimated time frame for this to be done?

Re: 21 ft party barge

You have to strip the boat off to the deck. So it depends on how much is on it, from a weekend to a week.

Re: 21 ft party barge

To do it right you need to remove everything off the boat: furniture, side rails, console, trim...then rip up the old carpet which can be a real nightmare. But once you get down to a surface you can work with the actual gluing and laying the carpet is easy, that only takes a couple hours...plenty of write-ups on how to do that.
Be careful though ripping up the old carpet, because if your floors are getting old the wood might be starting to delaminate and you will be ripping up wood along with old carpet and will wind up needed to replace the floor....but do it right and you will be happy

Re: 21 ft party barge

Does your toon have the aluminum deck? If so you are lucky. old jim

Re: 21 ft party barge

it's wooden and solid. the underneath looks real good. I am going to start taking it apart this evening.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I thought mine was good too from the underneath, the top turned out to be another story. Best of luck!! Post some pics if you get a chance

Re: 21 ft party barge

If your not to far away I wouldn't mind helping, In between Huntington and Charleston. I have done several.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I live in Man in Logan county. I'm prob 90 minutes from Beech Fork. I can be at East Lynn in 1 hr 15 minutes go there all the time. I do have a problem I cannot get any of the bolts for the railings to come out. They are rusted. I tried liquid wrench to no avail. Does anyone have any idea of how I can get these free ?

Re: 21 ft party barge

i did it years back on my 24. A cheap soldering iron makes quick work of making holes for all the bolts, while preventing unraveling.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I have to laugh a bit when I think back to what happened with ours. Started out that the striping decals on the side were faded and peeling off, so we found a sign shop that could cut new vinyl 1/8 inch wider than ours to cover the edge. We were just going to peel off the decals and put new ones on there. Then? it would make a nicer looking job if we removed the metal panels and cleaned them up, replace the decals and re-rivet them in (after we polished every rail on the boat). Then got to looking at the carpet and decided what the heck? we would just replace it while we had the side panels half way down anyway. Took everything down to the deck (about noon by now) and started removing the carpet only to find the floor was rotted in several places. Did I mention some of the furniture fell apart? Didn?t want to do a half way job, so decided to replace the deck. Didn?t like the rear cross member so I had a welding shop beef up the last few joists for added strength for the motor. Then there was no way we were going to do all this and not put new furniture on it!

We started out that morning to replacing the decals and before 3 pm that day it was down to two pontoons and headed to the welding shop with a furniture order soon after.

On the bolts, we wound up just breaking most of ours off with a socket on the bottom and vice grips on top. We just replaced them.

I hope your floor is solid and it works out fine for you. Good luck and I know you will enjoy it when it?s done. We have a great time on ours.

Re: 21 ft party barge

wvcatfish said:

I live in Man in Logan county. I'm prob 90 minutes from Beech Fork. I can be at East Lynn in 1 hr 15 minutes go there all the time. I do have a problem I cannot get any of the bolts for the railings to come out. They are rusted. I tried liquid wrench to no avail. Does anyone have any idea of how I can get these free ?

Click to expand...

Tighten bolts till they snap. buy new bolts.

Re: 21 ft party barge

http://imageshack.us/a/img109/6237/20130422195337.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img199/7700/20130422195318.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img199/2849/20130422195406.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img33/299/20130422195358.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img94/5920/20130422195345.jpg

Re: 21 ft party barge

Ok as you can see in the pics the toons really shine now . I used acid that a car lot uses to shine rims a buddy gave me. and the other pics is of the carpet I have taken 2 seats out already. The girlfriend is headed to jo annn fabrics for vinyl Friday they have marine grade on sale for half off going on.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I can't open the pics at work...but for your railing bolts i would either take a grinder to the bottom to cut off the nut, or if you can get a sawz-all blade between the railing and the floor you might be able to cut the bolt....other options: heat....freeze....dremel....drill out...ect...

Re: 21 ft party barge

If you wanted to take the easy route you could just put the new carpet over the old....this is a bad idea because it will trap in allot of moisture and prematurely rot the floor..but if you plan on doing the floors in a couple years and need a temp solution till then you can do that. I have a friend who did this a couple years ago and his floors are still ok...as far as i know.
He didn't even remove the furniture, he just cut the carpet around everything to fit and stapled it down.
I would not recommend this option but it is an option.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I ran into more or less the same thing. the nuts on the bottom were ok but some rocket scientist put Al carage head bolts in it and I ended up grinding the heads off. I put back SS hex heads.

Re: 21 ft party barge

That is the exact same boat that I am in the process of rebuilding. Let me guess it's a 1989ish sun tracker party barge DL21 with 21" toons. I had the same problem with some of my rail bolts. They were a phillips head bolt and I just dilled them out from the top with a slightly bigger drill bit than the 1/4" bolt. Drill slowly once you get close to the end and you will drill the complete top of the bolt off and it will pull out from the bottom. they drill real easy. I would love to see some more pictures of it.

Re: 21 ft party barge

I got almost all the rails off. Sat I will get the rest off

Re: 21 ft party barge

Just re-done mine this year, I installed flooring for a living so knowing the pain of tearing up glued down carpet is a nightmare even if the floors are in great condition, I stapled mine on one the side of the wood decking about ever 4" then used about 4 family members on the other side to help me pull it tight and then staple that side the same way.This worked out great for me if i ever have to redo any wood or carpet I can pull the staples out and roll it back or if the staples start rusting they will be behind the capping. Luckly I had allready tore up the old carpet when I purchased the boat, I used an entire 5 gallon bucket of the colored stain and staind the entire deck I had it this way for over a year with no problems.