Bass Tracker- Removing old carpet and plywood- Stuck

[Tracker12]

Hello, I have a new to me 1996 Aluminum Bass Tracker v17. The carpet is complelty worn, I also notice that the plywood is old and falling apart. My goal was to have the entire plywood removed tonight but got stuck not knowing how hard it was to remove it. I tried looking for nails/ screws holding down the plywood to the deck frame. I also tried putting a little pressure by trying to pry it off but stopped because I was not sure and dont want to mess anything up. Im wondering if its glued on or screwed somewhere i cant see, maybe through the bottom of the deck frame??

Does anyone have any idea on how to remove the plywood.

See pic.

Thanks.

 

[jigngrub]

Re: Bass Tracker- Removing old carpet and plywood- Stuck

From the factory, that era Tracker has easy to remove decking... but a previous owner that didn't know what they were doing may have modified it by installing the decking and then laying the carpet over the deck fasteners instead of doing it like it was done at the factory and wrapping all of the deck pieces in carpet and then installing them with the fasteners driven through the carpet so they'd be exposed and easy to remove when the decking had to be lifted the next time.

I have a '97 Tracker Pro Deep V 17 that I bought new and have had the decking out twice without any problems:



It also sounds like a previous owner may have disposed of the factory rot-proof decking and installed cheaper regular decking if your decking is falling apart too.

To disassemble try pulling all of the old carpet off first and then look for the fasteners holding the decking down and remove them. If the carpet is wrapped around to the back of each piece of decking the carpet and decking were installed right, if the carpet isn't wrapped around the back of the decking it's wrong.

Taking the decking out of one of these boats for the first is a bit of a puzzle and there's a sequence to it. Start at the bow first and remove the highest pieces first and work your way down:

After that it gets easier.

After redoing my carpet once I decided to use marine vinyl the second time and it's so much better. Here's a link to my thread:
http://forums.iboats.com/boat-resto...ir/97-tracker-pro-deep-v-facelift-509163.html

If you have any questions feel free to ask and I'll try to help.

 

[Tracker12]

Re: Bass Tracker- Removing old carpet and plywood- Stuck

Thx for the reply. I definitely look into this today.

 

[Tracker12]

Re: Bass Tracker- Removing old carpet and plywood- Stuck

I tore the carpet and found the screws holding the deck. I tried unscrewing some but they were kinda seized. Im going to grind off the heads of the screws to remove the deck. I will post pics onced all removed.

 

[jigngrub]

Re: Bass Tracker- Removing old carpet and plywood- Stuck

I tore the carpet and found the screws holding the deck. I tried unscrewing some but they were kinda seized. Im going to grind off the heads of the screws to remove the deck. I will post pics onced all removed.

That's what you get when you don't use stainless steel screws or aluminum rivets to fasten a deck down in a tinny... and I see a lot of the covering of the deck fasteners on here too, makes me just shake my head. I try to explain their folly to them but it just falls on deaf ears, they'll learn one of these days... maybe.

Since you're seeing what happens when you do a build like this, you'll understand first hand what kind of problems these less than desirable assemblies cause on down the road when you need to make a repair or modification.