What am I looking at?

[classiccat]

Holy cow, did you ruin your clecos?

As far as clecos, I've seen them, played around with them a little and find them interesting but I don't own any. Do you recommend I hunt some down for installing the patches?

Thinking as I'm typing, I'm not sure how I would hold those patches in place without them. Maybe throw in a few temporary small screws, install rivets, pull screws and install rivets where the screws were? I may have answered my own question.

I'm going to try the epoxy idea on the bow gasket. I'll still have to do something to stop water from migrating from the keel drain hole up and into the bow. Maybe just fill the keel full of sealant. I've seen that suggested elsewhere.

Denatured alcohol makes short work of 5200... just don't use it near the areas you want to seal. Acetone is more suitable for cleaning-up the patches.

Clecos are worth their weight in gold if you have alot of patching to do. They're very handy even for reassembly. I did used screws until someone recommended clecos on my rebuild thread.

 

[chris.olson]

I would not weld on that boat. Fix cracked bulkheads with riveted plate and angle. Get rid of all the foam out of the boat and steam clean the hull with aluminum acid wash. Then fill the keel with Marine-Tex epoxy from the inside. The keel don't go all the way to the stern on Alumacraft Pad V two-piece hulls. The sheets overlap at the stern. Make sure to check the rivets on the strakes too, sometimes those need to be re-bucked. After you get it sealed up then paint the entire inside of the hull with zinc chromate so it don't corrode again.

After repair, fill the boat with water and check it for leaks.

That hull is the same as the '84 Pro 17 I restored and I also tore the stern apart and replaced the transom in the boat. Had to fabricate and replace the entire outer sheet on the transom because it had holes from galvanic corrosion next to the waterlogged wood in the transom. You'll find the same thing where you got waterlogged foam and those can be sealed from the inside with epoxy.

If you want the original graphics on the boat, those are no longer available from Alumacraft. So make sure you take some photos of the outside of the boat, take those to a sign shop where they can design and computer cut the decals from your photos. All told I think I ended up with about $3,000 in the boat, which is about 1/10 the cost of a new one, same thing as a new one. After this photo was took we replaced the seats with new Termpress high-back, which are Alumacraft and Ranger OEM.