Deck replacement on 1995 AS Explorer 245 - advice needed

[msteinkampf]

Before putting the deck back together, I wanted to remove some epoxy that I had carelessly splashed on the gel coat when I was rebuilding the deck for the fuel tank. It’s a spot about 3 by 6 inches with epoxy embedded in the nonskid.


I did some searching on the Internet about how to remove cured epoxy from gel coat, but I didn’t find anything better than what is in the West System fiberglass manual: “Use a heat gun to soften the epoxy (200°F). Heat a small area and use a paint or cabinet scraper to remove the bulk of the coating. Sand the surface to remove the remaining material.” I tried carefully heating up the area with my heat gun, but the epoxy wasn’t softening, and I was concerned that I might damage the underlying gel coat by overheating, so I tried another approach – hot water. I first tried soaking a towel lying on the epoxy with water at exactly 200 degrees, but the epoxy didn’t budge. However, pouring boiling water directly onto the epoxy did loosen it up enough to be picked out with an awl whose taper matched the grooves in the nonskid.


This method was tedious but effective. At one point I had three pots of water on the stove, as it was clear that water any cooler than boiling was ineffective. Scrubbing with a bronze bristle brush under boiling water removed almost all the remaining epoxy while leaving the nonskid completely intact.


I’ll finish cleaning the nonskid with some Soft Scrub and maybe some acetone or gentle pressure washing, but it’s clean enough for reassembly now.

M

[msteinkampf]

It’s been easy to procrastinate on this project, with mission trips to Honduras and Kenya, family visits, etc., but there have been some comments from the family about getting this project done. I sanded and cleaned the bottom skins, coated them with epoxy, wet down the Coosa boards with unthinned epoxy and then coated them with epoxy thickened with colloidal silica (West System 406), and glued the panels together.

Initial coat of epoxy on lower skin.


Coosa board with thickened epoxy applied to lower skin.


The Coosa board was applied on May 29, and it was a cool spring, so I used the fast hardener (West System 205). I didn’t get around to applying the top skin until July 18. The top skin was a little more than 0.05 inches lower than the surrounding deck, so I used a layer of 1708 to even up the edges, and I even managed to tuck the 1708 under the kerf after I wet it down with epoxy. By this time it was hot enough to switch to the slow hardener (West System 206).

Some mismatch was expected.


Laying out the 1708


Coosa with 1708 wetted and ready for the top skin

I applied unthickened epoxy to the upper skin, let it get tacky, and then troweled on thickened epoxy with a TotalBoat flexible spreader, using the ¼ inch V-notch.


I also used some thickened epoxy to reattach the bottom skin to the stringers. Three days later, the deck was rock solid, and the edges were almost perfectly aligned.



M

[RickK]

Looks like it's coming out real nice. Congrats.

[msteinkampf]

I haven’t posted in a while, but the project continues. I took a break from the deck rebuild to launch the boat at Smith Lake, Alabama. I've been running the engines on a hose using gas spiked with Seafoam to clean out the carburetors (“Dunk’s method”), but part of the cleaning process involves running the engines under load. Also, I wanted to do some trailer repair that could only be accomplished while the boat was launched. I suspect this boat hasn’t seen water for several years.

Maiden voyage, sort of.


The event was a mixed bag – it was nice to see the boat in the water, no apparent leaks. The engines started easily with the throttles advanced, and the starboard engine ran well enough to allow us to putter around Smith Lake and almost get up on plane without any use of the trim tabs. However, I couldn’t get the port engine to idle, and it stalled every time I tried to put it in gear.

The trailer repair went well. I replaced the rusty galvanized steel bunk supports with aluminum brackets. Most of the bolts just had superficial corrosion, but the ones holding the bunks in place were severely damaged and got replaced with stainless steel. The trailer axles also had some rust, so I scraped them and sprayed on some zinc cold galvanizing compound.

Nice aluminum trailer, rusted-out bunk bracket.


Getting the boat off and on the trailer was good practice, but backing the empty trailer too deeply into the water caused it to float! Is this a characteristic of all aluminum trailers?

M

[msteinkampf]

I ordered carburetor kits from SIM Yamaha (https://www.simyamaha.com/) and decided to splurge and let someone else do the rebuilds – Georgia Carburetors.

By appointment only – makes sense for such a niche business.


Georgia Carburetors proprietor Dave Fleshman. I suspect much of his work consists of rebuilding the carburetors on classic cars, but he was willing to rebuild mine if I could supply the rebuild kits.


Removing the carburetors was straightforward (I recommend watching this video if you want guidance on how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjoW5WIhIIU&ab_channel=ReelTeaseFishing). I decided to have just the port engine carbs rebuilt first just to confirm that the work would improve how the engines run. The carbs were ready three weeks after I dropped them off. After reinstalling, the port engine started and idled perfectly.

Time to get the other carburetor rebuilt!

M

[RickK]

Yes, an aluminum trailer with tandem axles (tires) provides plenty of bouyancy to make it float when no boat on it.