1978 16' Thundercraft

[ezgoing328]

Hey everyone, new to boating and we have recently got a boat. Well, it's 16 foot Thundercraft with 70 horse Evinrude engine. The boat runs pretty good but the "BIG PROBLEM" is the floor. We dont know much about boats but this one has a walk through windshield with bench seats in the front. The seats were back to back but rotted bad. We have took the seats out and ripped up the carpet and there is weak or soft spots in the floor on each side where the seats were. Well, we went to Lowe's and purchased plywood to fix the floor, thinking we could just put plywood on top of what is there. Well, I'm a little concerned about the guts of it. Is there wood in there that is bad rottened too. We took it out this weekend "as is" lawn chairs in it just to see what it did. Well, the floor kinda moved up and down as we went over the wakes. There is a couple of cracks in the fiberglass floor but it didn't break and sink? I've been trying to do a little research on fixing the floor and some say use "kitty hair fiberglass" on it. Any suggestions??? Do we need to cut up the whole floor or can we strengthen the floor with a fiberglass kit??? We have no idea what we're doing! Any help would be great! Thanks.

 

[drewpster]

Re: 1978 16' Thundercraft

Wanna see your boat disassembled?

Check out the link under this picture. "tri-hull transom job"

 

[ezgoing328]

Re: 1978 16' Thundercraft

WOW! that's it. Very nice! ours has a brown stripe otherwise that is it. Any suggestions???

 

[Andy in NY]

Re: 1978 16' Thundercraft

Hey everyone, new to boating and we have recently got a boat. Well, it's 16 foot Thundercraft with 70 horse Evinrude engine. The boat runs pretty good but the "BIG PROBLEM" is the floor. We dont know much about boats but this one has a walk through windshield with bench seats in the front. The seats were back to back but rotted bad. We have took the seats out and ripped up the carpet and there is weak or soft spots in the floor on each side where the seats were. Well, we went to Lowe's and purchased plywood to fix the floor, thinking we could just put plywood on top of what is there. Well, I'm a little concerned about the guts of it. Is there wood in there that is bad rottened too. We took it out this weekend "as is" lawn chairs in it just to see what it did. Well, the floor kinda moved up and down as we went over the wakes. There is a couple of cracks in the fiberglass floor but it did break and sink? I've been trying to do a little research on fixing the floor and some say use "kitty hair fiberglass" on it. Any suggestions??? Do we need to cut up the whole floor or can we strengthen the floor with a fiberglass kit??? We have no idea what we're doing! Any help would be great! Thanks.

You don't need to know anything about boats, per se... but you do need to be somewhat handy. There are many many walk throughs in the completed projects forum, i would suggest you start there. Its ALOT of work, dirty, depressing and lead to side effects like buying more boats and divorce.


Its no where near as simple as putting down ply over the existing deck. it ALL needs to come out.

this is what my floor looked like:

after the carpet came up:

and this is what the actual plywood was like...

kind of like wet cardboard.



You need to tear that deck out and most likely replace the stringers and transom, then the deck. its not an easy process, but its not bad with the people here... very helpful.