On Jan 6, 2:15*pm, John H wrote:
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 10:27:33 -0500, "jamesgangnc" wrote:
Are you seeing a high volume of Harry initiated new topics? *I'm not and I
wondered if others really did or they were counting replys. *I see Harry
replys llike crazy but practically no new topic postings.

I generally reply to the boating questions.

Off season for me as well since I'm a water sports boater. *Lots of things
to fix this winter. *I finished fixing the hole in the front of the boat. *I
think I posted about that one. *The results came out fairly good
http://home.earthlink.net/~jamesgangnc/ebay/boathullfixed.jpg*It's a little
uneven but you have to run your hand over it to really tell. *If anyone
remembers, the hole was pretty big with lots of delamination. *I made some
pieces of wood contoured to the hull and used them with a bottle jack to
hold it all closed while the epoxy set. *I then ground out the broken edge
with the dremel and filled it with an epoxy/filler mix. *Finally covered it
with gelcoat. *Had to spend a while color matching since it'a an 18 year old
boat.

Now I've got the outdrive off. *Looked like the upper gimbal bearing was
going. *And the gelcoat had cracked around the lower edge. *So I pulled it
all off and discovered that both the upper gimbal bolts and the steering arm
bolts were loose. *So just need some gaskets for that problem. *Meanwhile I
still need to grind out the cracked gelcoat on th ebottom of the transom and
see what's up there. *Transom plywood it's self is solid all around the
cutout so I think it's just going to be a gelcoat repair.

I think I probably should have traded this boat in 4 or 5 years ago but now
our teenager is headed to college next year so I expect use will start
dropping off. *Might as well fix this one up one more time.

That repair job looks damn good.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thank you!!! Unfortunately my technique is a bit the same for gelcoat
and wallboard mud. Sort of like shampoo instructions. I put some on,
wait for it to dry, and sand most of it off. Repeat. Eventually I
get there but it's a good thing I'm not in a hurry :-) One advantage
of being a fair weather boater.

In the ongoing effort to provide on-topic content I'll take some snaps
of the cracked transom gelcoat "before" shots. Too early to say if
I'll produce something worthy of an "after" shot.

Sure had to take a lot of crap off the boat to get the gymbal housing
off. Argh.