lakelover
Rear Admiral
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2003
- Messages
- 4,390
So I started tearing it apart & cleaning it up. Once I found the right size drill for the rivet removal, the heads just popped off with the help of a screwdriver. I took out the seats, floor, mouse nest & mice, and ants nest. The foam under the floor was soaked & dripping in the stern half and dry in front. My plan is to not replace it under the floor, but to put some closed cell under the bow, in the gunwales and maybe in the seat bases. After getting all that mess out, I scrubbed and cleaned for several hours, it smells a lot better now. Then I did the leak test.
I filled it with water up to the seem where the bottom and sides meet, and used a car jack to tilt the boat up and down front to back. I was afraid the trailer jack would buckle with the weight of the water.
I only found one actual rivet leaking on the bottom where it had hit something and there was a dent. Otherwise, there are a couple sections of the side seems where it leaks a little. I'm planning to tighten the rivets in those sections using the double hammer method, and figure out what to use to caulk the seem inside the boat. Not sure what to use for that yet. Overall, I was please with how little it leaked.
The worst problem area was in the bow where the center seems all come together and up to the bow eye. Even my 2003 Starcraft has small leaks in this area. I fixed that by applying epoxy putty up and down the seem and that has worked well, and will probably do the same thing here.
Before starting work:
After cleaning up, the leak test:
Now a couple questions...
I had planned to put in back to back lounge seats, but I think they will ride higher than I want to sit and they all seem to have 10" bases. I'm thinking of installing Wise low-back Designer Plus folding seats back to back so I can make lower bases. If I make plywood box bases, how do these seats attach? (Plan is something like this):
Ideally, I'd like to have non-folding back to back seats with lower bases, but haven't been able to find any.
What should I use to seal the side/bottom seem?
Also, what do you think of the epoxy putty sealing plan for up under the bow?
This post got a lot longer than I planned....
I filled it with water up to the seem where the bottom and sides meet, and used a car jack to tilt the boat up and down front to back. I was afraid the trailer jack would buckle with the weight of the water.
I only found one actual rivet leaking on the bottom where it had hit something and there was a dent. Otherwise, there are a couple sections of the side seems where it leaks a little. I'm planning to tighten the rivets in those sections using the double hammer method, and figure out what to use to caulk the seem inside the boat. Not sure what to use for that yet. Overall, I was please with how little it leaked.
The worst problem area was in the bow where the center seems all come together and up to the bow eye. Even my 2003 Starcraft has small leaks in this area. I fixed that by applying epoxy putty up and down the seem and that has worked well, and will probably do the same thing here.
Before starting work:
After cleaning up, the leak test:
Now a couple questions...
I had planned to put in back to back lounge seats, but I think they will ride higher than I want to sit and they all seem to have 10" bases. I'm thinking of installing Wise low-back Designer Plus folding seats back to back so I can make lower bases. If I make plywood box bases, how do these seats attach? (Plan is something like this):
Ideally, I'd like to have non-folding back to back seats with lower bases, but haven't been able to find any.
What should I use to seal the side/bottom seem?
Also, what do you think of the epoxy putty sealing plan for up under the bow?
This post got a lot longer than I planned....
