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.

[msteinkampf]

I trimmed the edges of the deck cutout with a skil-saw with a diamond blade using a piece of aluminum angle iron as a marking guide. I'm going to follow up with a belt sander to try to get the edges of the cutout as straight and perpendicular as possible.



My plan is to bolt the angle iron under the deck to serve as a lip on which to install a deck hatch. Test fitting here.



M

[dbiscayne]

Be sure to keep in mind the reaction between stainless bolts and aluminum angle. The aluminum will corrode pretty bad over time, might end up with a loose angle and deck hatch. Aluminum screws would be the ticket, or glassed pieces of Coosa to make a support.

[msteinkampf]

Point well taken. I will do what I can to minimize corrosion. Fabricating a support rim out of Coosa and fiberglass would have given a more factory appearance with fewer exposed screws, but I thought the aluminum would be quicker and just as strong.

M

[msteinkampf]

I set up the hardtop on sawhorses in my basement to make it more convenient to work on. My plan is to repair holes and apply gelcoat as needed on this piece before working on the rest of the boat. Temperature is 68-72F, perfect for this kind of work.

There is some danger here – note the gas furnace in the background. I’ll have to turn off the furnace (and the gas hot water heater hidden behind it) or pull the piece outside when handling flammable solvents.



Hardware removed. The inside of the radio compartment looks like it was sprayed with black paint.



The gel coat on the top surface seems almost worn through.


The top seems to have been constructed with Nidacore or a similar product. Most of the screw holes are in decent shape except this one, which attached the top to the
front corner of the aluminum tubing. This probably occurred from contact with a low-lying tree branch.



I took advantage of a sale at Jamestown Distributors to buy some gelcoat and polyester repair putty. I would prefer to have purchased color-matched gelcoat from Spectrum (they market a color specific for 1995 Aquasports), but at $230 per quart (versus less than $40 for the TotalBoat product), that’s just too pricey for me, so I downloaded an app for color matching and went around the boat checking to see just what color white the boat was. The app (“Swatches”) identifies a color using values for red, green, and blue – an RGB code. Pure red would be 255/0/0, pure green 0/255/0, and so on. Before checking the color, I cleaned off each surface with Soft Scrub and alcohol. The values varied widely and seemed highly dependent on the amount of light reaching the surface. I finally decided to use the piece I had cut out from the fish box as a reference. It had been shielded from sun exposure and I suspect it most closely represents the original color of the boat. I cleaned it thoroughly and set it in bright indirect sunlight (but still shaded). The value was 255/255/255 – pure white. That’s too good to be true, and I will confirm this when I open the can of gelcoat. I would appreciate hearing from anyone else who has used TotalBoat gelcoat on their Aquasport – I couldn’t find much info about this on the forum.

Fish box cutout reading as pure white. Will color matching really be this easy?




M

[msteinkampf]

I started by covering the outside of the holes with packing tape, putting down some chopped strand mat (CSM) and six-ounce cloth on the inside of the box over the larger holes, and filling the smaller holes with putty followed by patches of CSM – no better place to start than where no one will ever see it. I actually used cardboard plugs covered with packing tape on the larger holes to prevent the fiberglass from sagging out. There were cracks on the bottom corners that I ground out and repaired with CSM and cloth at the same time.

It's always good to have a project that justifies the acquisition of power tools.


Resin supplies acquired thus far. I bought the laminating resin about 18 months ago and stored it in my garage refrigerator. It’s supposed to have a shelf-life of 6-12 months, but it was still in good condition.


I put down the first layer of gelcoat with no thickener or pigment. It was clear some color matching would be needed, and probably some thickener, too.




Time to buy some pigment.

M

[Duffy1470]

Msteinkampf, I currently have a parallel build going on a aqua 196 and am about to use structural polyester bonding putty which I see pictures of in your thread. Have you used it yet and what are your thoughts on filling voids up to 1/2 inch with it?

Super cool build. You have a knack for this work.

https://classicaquasport.com/smf/index.php?topic=16323.msg157868;topicseen#new

[msteinkampf]

Msteinkampf, I currently have a parallel build going on a aqua 196 and am about to use structural polyester bonding putty which I see pictures of in your thread. Have you used it yet and what are your thoughts on filling voids up to 1/2 inch with it?

If you are referring to the TotalBoat Structural Polyester Repair Putty, I have indeed used it. It has some pros and cons:

Pro:

It's convenient and easy to apply. Although the manufacturer markets it as being "Reinforced with long strand milled glass fibers", it has the consistency of a paste or jelly, not like some of the "kitty hair" products I have seen marketed elsewhere. It easily fills holes as small as 3/16-inch diameter. The manufacturer claims that this is a versatile product which can be used for filling holes, forming radii, bonding, and bedding fiberglass. Although I have read that it can be difficult to sand after curing, I haven't found this to be a problem.

Con:

Expect some shrinkage, as you should with all polyester-based products. Here is a 1/2-inch diameter hole that I covered with packing tape (on the outer surface) and then filled from the inside with repair putty followed by a layer of chopped strand mat (CSM) wetted with laminating resin. After the putty cured, I removed the tape, painted on some gel coat (with wax), and then sanded the area down. Note that there is a thin rim of the white gel coat around the cured putty plug. This is the kind of shrinkage to expect when repairing a hole of this size. The smaller hole on the right was treated the same way and shows a tiny bit of shrinkage, too.



On this repair, I applied a thin coat of the putty over the entire surface and then carefully leveled it flush before it cured to see how well it would perform as a fairing compound. The deepest holes were about 3/32-inch deep, and you can see the putty in these spots (marked by the arrows at 4 and 8 o'clock) shrank substantially. I will gently grind those spots to get a rough surface and then refill with thickened gel coat or another round of putty.



I'm going to continue to use this structural repair putty for filling holes, but for any hole larger than 1/4-inch diameter I expect to reinforce the repair on at least one side with CSM, and if it's a high-stress area, I might reinforce it on both sides.

M

[Duffy1470]

Great info and exactly the feedback I was looking for. Thanks so much. Hugely helpful. Build on good sir.

[dbiscayne]

pigment in the resin is a great idea when covering a darker colored fill job like that. I've seen a lot of rod holder holes get filled with a plug of coosa covered in plain resin/glass, faired out real nice, then painted over. After a couple years in the sun you can spot the repairs pretty easily, like the paint becomes more translucent over time. Good Awlgrip paint too.