looserivet
Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2018
- Messages
- 23
As the title says, I have this boat and its developed a ton of leaks all of a sudden. I've owned it for four years, it was garage kept and freshwater run before I got it. The last time out I drained out about 40 gallons of water after a day on the water, event though the bilge pump was working. It ran about every 15 minutes that day. I filled the bilge up with clean water and found about 40 leaks, about half of them are rivets leaking, the other half are pinholes in the hull. Four rivets have popped off, the rest are just leaking but don't seem to be loose. The biggest leaks are the pin holes, it looked like it was raining under the boat when I put about 30 gallons into the lower hull. All the leaks are below the deck, all the leaks and loose rivets are near the keel, each of the rivets that leak are the last or lowest pairs on each rib, and all the perforations are near the leaking rivets.
The boat has loose foam flotation, I can see some of it at the back edge of the deck. The deck plywood and vinyl is original, and is in decent shape yet. There are no soft spots on the floor.
Its never seen saltwater, it lived its whole life on a lake in PA. I brought it here four years ago.
My question is, do I write off the hull for corrosion or attempt to fix this? Loose or missing rivets are no big deal to me, but the sudden number of pin holes tells me something ugly is going on below the deck corrosion wise.
I've owned dozens of Starcraft aluminum boats and have never seen one with corrosion holes like this, especially without any other signs of corrosion on the hull. If it were electrolysis I'd see it on the bare aluminum bits or around the water line, those areas are clean. The corrosion holes are all midship, basically right below the console on the starboard side only. The rivets that leak are in the same area, also on the starboard side. There are four rivets leaking at the stern, the last four along both sides of the keel strip. These were likely just bumped loose over time, there is no corrosion there.
I went around the whole boat with a plastic chisel and tapped on each rivet to see if any were loose or ready to pop and found none, I find it odd that only a certain few rivets and certain area is affected.
The boat has loose foam flotation, I can see some of it at the back edge of the deck. The deck plywood and vinyl is original, and is in decent shape yet. There are no soft spots on the floor.
Its never seen saltwater, it lived its whole life on a lake in PA. I brought it here four years ago.
My question is, do I write off the hull for corrosion or attempt to fix this? Loose or missing rivets are no big deal to me, but the sudden number of pin holes tells me something ugly is going on below the deck corrosion wise.
I've owned dozens of Starcraft aluminum boats and have never seen one with corrosion holes like this, especially without any other signs of corrosion on the hull. If it were electrolysis I'd see it on the bare aluminum bits or around the water line, those areas are clean. The corrosion holes are all midship, basically right below the console on the starboard side only. The rivets that leak are in the same area, also on the starboard side. There are four rivets leaking at the stern, the last four along both sides of the keel strip. These were likely just bumped loose over time, there is no corrosion there.
I went around the whole boat with a plastic chisel and tapped on each rivet to see if any were loose or ready to pop and found none, I find it odd that only a certain few rivets and certain area is affected.