Re: MFG Niagara
I'm getting a few guys on fiberglassics who say I should go with the pourable transom stuff ... wich is just resin with glass micro spheres/baloons to increase surface space & reduce weight. There's a number of brands, but they're all essentially the same stuff. And WAAAYYY expensive... BUT I can get the resin and the glass stuff seperately for less and mix it myself. Anybody know anything about this stuff? If so, do I got the right idea?
Same here, I considered mixing up my own transom filler but even then the cost and added labor comes pretty close to the cost of using Nida-Bond. On that Niagara you would only need 2 pails of Nida-Bond, I figured about 8 gallons on mine.
My concerns were on how to dam up the lower transom area so that the resin didn't pour into the bilge, and how to secure the drain tubes. After thinking about it, I just went ahead and used wood, if there was a way to avoid cutting or damaging the floor's edge ending up with some sort of visible repair inside the boat, I'd have done the Nida-Bond transom fix but since the splashwell on these comes right out and access to the inner transom area is fairly easy, I just did mine with ACX plywood and epoxy. Once it was all done you can see a taped seam along the sides and lower edges of the transom inside, but no cutting into the drainwell area or deck was needed. The original transom was rotted from the middle out, mostly just around the engine mounting area and upper corners. The lower transom wood was still dry and solid and was a real pain to dig out. I didn't cut the inner skin all the way out at the bottom, I left about an inch along where it met the floor. I dug out the lower wood, fitted the new transom wood, and sort of tilted it into place. I did have to notch it a bit at the top, but the wood I put in was a bit taller and wider than what I removed. The original wood either shrunk, or they didn't make the transom wood panel full size. It didn't reach up into the corners much past the tie down loops, and didn't reach the bottom of the boat much beyond the lower drain. The lower drain hole actually was only about 3/4 of it's diameter into the wood itself. I planed and file fit the new wood to fit like a glove, leaving only about 1/6" around the edges for epoxy. Its probably overkill, but the way I see it, if the original transom wood lasted 45 years, this will now last at least that long or more. By then, I'll be long gone.
Best of all, I had all the materials here left over from other projects so I didn't need to buy anything other than new drain tube sleeves.
