Water in Bracket

[strick]

A couple weekends ago fellow CSC member Rhett aka "Chaos" stopped buy to pay a visit. We were looking at my 23.... and I was showing him the bracket that I had made 3.5 years ago. As I opened the Armstrong deck plates we noticed the chamber was full of water!! I tasted it and sure enough it was salt water from the last fishing trip. The deck plates were on good and tight so that meant I had a leak somewhere. Just what I needed....more work to do.

I noticed were the top of the swim platform met the transom the 5200 had shrunk resulting in a little crack in the 5200 that could let water in between the swim platform and transom.




The 1/4 inch gap between the forward edge of the swim platform and the transom is a design flaw from being a rookie. The picture below is from when I made that bracket. If you look close and sight down the forward edge of the swim platform you can see were it bends in slightly. The divot inward is in the area were the swim platform sits on the flotation chamber's forward edge.



Now heres a picture of when I bonded the swim platform to the flotation chamber. You can see where there is not enough cabosil in the gap between the swim platform and flotation chamber. This is where my leak was.



Even though I filled this gap with cabosil, to make it look better it still cracked and resulted in the leak.




Here is a picture from inside the bracket that shows where the water came in from on that forward edge.



You can see the light coming from the crack. Clearly I did not put enough cabosil on the ledge for it to create a good bond between the two pieces. Also it looks like I made the cabosil too runny so it made the inadequate bond. In retrospect I should have just glassed this area like Tim did with his bracket before putting the bracket on the boat.

To fix it I had to remove all the 5200 sealant. Grind out the area to be glassed and epoxy a 1.5 inch wide strip of 1708 over the defect. It was a real PIA removing all the 5200 from the gap and then grinding that area out.



while I was at it I decided to go the extra mile and epoxy the underside of the swim platform just to be safe. A shot showing the underside of the swim platform ground down and ready for epoxy.



1.5 inch strip of 1708 epoxied into place.




quick fair and ready for paint



repainted



finished repair



strick