Quote:
Originally Posted by Capt Terry
. . . Are there any good tips about removing the old ones and doing a good flare & sealing job on the new ones? . . .
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Terry,
If you're getting enough water leaking into a Seafari hull to trigger the automatic bilge pump after you've been anchored for a half hour or so, your scuppers are probably leaking. I believe the original design just depended on the flare of the brass tube against the hull to create a seal and they didn't use any sort of bedding compound. I believe that the flare deteriorates over time, allowing a small leak that gradually gets worse. If the boat is left in salt water, electrolysis may also be a factor. Electrolysis can cause the zinc to disappear from the brass, leaving a sponge-like copper material that's very weak.
Even the original brass tubes are pretty soft, so to remove them, just use a screwdriver+hammer to hit the edge of the lower flare and buckle the tube enough that you can collapse it and pull it out with a pair of pliers. I've replaced mine a couple of times in the 41 years I've had my boat. Don't think I used any sealant the first time, and during the 2nd replacement, I discovered that the wood 4x4 blocks that Potter installed between the hull and inner liner where they drilled the scupper holes had partially rotted away, so there was a significant gap between the brass tubes and wood block. I did a post on here about 2007 or 2008 documenting my repair process, but can't find any posts that old with the search function, so will try to describe what I did as follows:
I wanted something more substantial than brass tubes keeping water out of the boat, so came up with the idea of just filling the holes with thickened epoxy and then redrilling them. I used a core consisting of a tapered PVC union and riser with a wood dowel which could be easily drilled out that would also function as a soft pilot hole for the 1" twist drill.
These pictures should give you a pretty good idea of the process. I first dried out the wood with denatured alcohol and then used Git Rot to strengthen and make 'em a bit more waterproof. Poured the thickened epoxy into an empty caulk tube (I chilled the resin in the fridge before mixing to keep it from kicking off too fast!) and used a caulk gun to inject it into the holes. Repair of stbd side went well, but on port side the resin just followed the path of the water and ran out into the hull! Fortunately the resin was still thick enough that it sealed up the leak when it hardened, so a second injection of resin worked ok. Redrilling the holes was a piece of cake and I ended up with little to no mismatch with original holes in bottom of hull. I did use a generous amount of Life Caulk around the new tubes just to be safe however! I didn't bother with a fancy flaring tool, as I had an old tapered 1/2" drive socket with a very nice radius on it for starting the flare, so just put some 3/8" threaded rod with some nuts and washers thru the socket and tightened the nuts to flare the tube enough to lock it in place. At that point, it was easy to use a ball peen hammer to finish the flare on the bottom of the hull. Those scuppers haven't leaked a drop since then!
Boat Owners Warehouse in Riviera Beach was able to get the 1" OD x ~8-9" long brass tubes overnight for just a few bucks. Although some folks on here said the tubes should be heated with a torch first to anneal and soften them to make 'em easy to flare, I didn't do that. They were already flared on one end, so I suspect they were already in the annealed condition, as they were obviously intended to be flared on the other end as well, and I had no problem making the flare.
Hopefully this will help others repair their leaking scuppers! If you happen to have a CC model, you also have another potential leak source in the brass drain tube in the forward fish box, which is subject to the same deterioration as the scupper tubes! Denny