Boom!! R.I.P. Excel
 

Well 2020 sure has been a crappy year! First - COVID-19, then Ken's hip, now my trusty Yamaha 225 2-stroke blows up! Maybe a fried/chewed up piston will be covered on my extended Yamaha factory warranty? lol!

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Attachment 22249

You have my deepest heartfelt sympathy....:)

Please keep us posted when you will have memorial service.
If you start a "go fund me page" that is where I will draw the line..:rolleyes:

gonna be hard to find one that fits your transom like that one did

strick

My condolence, I know you loved the ole gal. Time for a heart transplant.

NO!!!!! Say it ain't so and just two weeks out of factory warranty!!!! Dang Jim that's bad timing!! :)

Wait, wait.......more like twenty years out of warranty! Gotta admit you can stretch a dollar pretty far!!!

Guys, Thanks for all the kind words! Now that the shock has worn off, I'm coming out with the Phase II renovation plan that includes a new poured notch 30" transom and new or newer OB. It's been 1985 since I blew up my last motor - boom style. So its time. After looking through my Engines "Last Will and Testament" I see that she was an "organ donor" and wishes to have her salvageable parts sold on Ebay! CDI-Computer, Carbs, Lower Unit, props, Throttle Postion and Crank sensors, Ignition coils, starter, T&T, etc. So over the next weeks I will be tearing the motor down and putting pieces and parts on Ebay. Next up is the demo of the original 43 year old transom. I got a lot of rotten wood in there and its all coming out. I figure cut off the skin this fall and the let the wood totally rot over the fall/winter, then complete the demo in the early spring. So by mid Spring 2021 I'll be ready for a new Composite Poured transom (SeaCast, Arjay, or similar). Then the $$ fun part starts -- Repower!
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SeaCast Pour
 

Hey Jim-
I completed my SeaCast transom redo July 2019. If I were to do it again would probably go Arjay. Think you have my cell. Give me a call if you care to discuss my experience. Hate to say it, but your engine choice got smaller with ETEC out of the picture.

Jim - 30” is the way to go. I even went up an inch to 31” for some additional vertical adjustment when I did my transom. If you’re going to cut the skin off to get at the core, you might consider going in from the inside. Depending how your deck hatches are oriented, might be less glass work. Also easier to get the tank out and drain your stringers. Just my 2 cents.

Pull the transom cap and leave the skin.

Use an electric chain saw to dig out the core. Low n slow.
You will save a ton of time fairing.

Condolences on the blown motor, good luck with the transom rehab and repower projects! Sorry for the thread drift here - my Sceptre is an I/O to outboard bracket conversion, and I expect that at some point the transom is going to need to be redone. I kind of like the pourable core concept, but because of the distance from the transom top (no transom cutout for motor) to the bottom of the V, I haven't been able to visualize a method for removing the wood. Any ideas?

Transom Wood removal
 

[IMG]http://www.classicseacraft.com/commu...pictureid=3169[/IMG]

Here is a pic of the transom tools I used after cutting the caps off all the top, sides and bottom of engine cut-out..
• 18” electric chainsaw (a longer one actually would have been better, maybe I couldn’t find one in electric, don’t remember)
• 3/8” electric drill (6 amp minimum to mix Seacast, best to use two and switch when the first one gets too hot stirring the mix)
• Redundant ear protection (didn’t remember soon enough that I had the Bose noise cancelling one, would have saved some right ear hearing)
• 1” dia drill bit (this bit initially had tapered threads on the tip which helped pull it through the wood, near the end of my drilling I removed the threads to avoid punching a hole through the hull, a 1.125” or 1.25” dia bit might have been less effort) and 18” extension (the PVC provided more control of the bit). I used the drill to make individual holes and then rotated it back and forth to connect the holes.
• A golf ball sized burr on the end of some ¼” extensions (however the extensions were so flexible the ball end followed the path of least resistance which sometimes was through the glass instead of the wood). Consequentially I had a few fiberglass scarves to fix. On another replacement I would use stouter extensions or not use it at all.
• A .120” x 3” x 3’ steel bar with a sharpened (and continually re-sharpened, chisel point at one end) to scrape the wood off the glass. Also some pre-bend to the bar sometimes aided access

This was my first Seacast transom replacement. The results are satisfactory but there are some things I would do differently on another boat and there were some lessons learned on Seacast, but for brevity I will keep this to wood removal. I am a mechanically handy guy who does almost all of my own work and followed Seacast’s advice as much as possible. I bet there are CSCers with a better technique. Some make it sound like removing the wood was a piece of cake. They must have had some serious damage. Mine had telltale signs of compromise including engine cut-out aluminum trim mismatches and moisture on the chips from all my exploratory holes (the only fiberglass cracks were short ones under the aluminum trim on the motor cut-out), however in some areas it was pretty solid. I spent nearly 80 hours removing wood. There were at least four locations where during the factory build there were nails between the two plywood sheets thereby hindering the drill and chainsaw. I realize you have a longer reach than I did. Perhaps use the drill with two extensions.

There are other approaches mentioned in posts. Think Bigshrimpin prefers cutting the aft sheet. Seacast does not recommend this, probably because that enable solutions avoiding a pourable.

Here is a pic of bracing I did and similar for the fwd sheet as well.



http://www.classicseacraft.com/commu...pictureid=3000

Jim-Also sending my condolences.....Your vintage 2 stroke motor has defied the odds until now. I can see the POST-COVID world ahead where you are crossing over to the Bahamas with your NEXT trusty outboard sporting a new transom!! Good luck on the process.