Transom Rot? under pintles

[tbillera]

Hello,
I am a new owner (hull#6 now in Redmond WA - formerly Lake Havasu) and new member to the forum. The boat is an inboard and in generally good shape having seem minimal salt water and been covered and trailer bound often.

My issue involves the rudder pintles. It appears the mounting area is very soft and I suspect core rot. I have estimates to repair at about $1000 involving grinding out the bad balsa and replacing, new gel coat, etc.

I will try to attach some pics....

Anyone else have this issue?

Any thoughts, advice, suggestions of complimentary upgrades while we are addressing this? I suspect leakage from toe rail above, seems localized to about 6-8" wide from rail to edge of transom, but tbd....

thanks!

[Jim Kloss]

I had water intrusion and a subsequent failure years ago (1994) with hull #8 due to a gouge in the glass that I didn't attend to. Repair was relatively easy from the exterior. Could theoretically do it from the inside, working through the instrument panel and from the lazarettes. I added larger backing plates. No problems there since, and I've had plenty of pintle problems as readers of this forum can attest.

Jim Kloss
s/v Ambivalence
S2 7.9 #8

[BarryE]

Had exactly the same problem with my boat shortly after I bought it.(hull #11) Yes, water is probably coming in from both the toe rail above the transom as well as around the pintles.
Far easier to do this repair from the outside, and then re gel coat after all is done and faired smooth.
Use a dremel or a roto-zip and cut out an oval around around each pintle, when I did this I cut about 6 inches high, and 10-12 inches long, to get as much of the wet balsa out as I could. I then used the bent nail in the drill to rout out under the lip of the glass another inch or so in all directions, then glassed in a block of marine ply set in a pile of glass mash where the pintles mount. More glass, more mash, all sanded smooth, and finally sprayed with thinned gelcoat of the correct color from minicraft.
IN the middle of all of this, before any glasswork you'll want to dry out the transom completely with a couple of heat lamps, or a space heater, and overdrill the screw holes on the top of the transom then fill and redrill.
Fill any other holes that are there and redrill those while you're at it.
When it comes to fairing the transom after your glaswork use a stiff long board and sand the top and bottom together so that your pintles will line up on the same plane when you're done, otherwise they'll bind.

[dave]

Ahh, the old bent nail trick again............................................
There will ALWAYS be wet or damp core left using this "method", and I use that word lightly. Cutting and/or grinding the glass back to dry. soild core is the ONLY way to repair anything right. It sucks for sure, but there it is!

Why is there never enough time or money to do a job right but always enough time and money to do the same job over?

[Marionete]

Hey there Dave; (Dr. Dave's Glassworks)

I'd like your recommendation for the best tool to open up the roving inside the transom for the upper rudder mount. All the other core repairs I have made so far left the outer skin intact, so I am attempting to do the same here.

I can use a roto-zip blade on my dremel, or go hi-tech with one of those expensive FEIN or Rockwell high-speed vibrating bit tools. The Fein and Rockwell work well in tight spaces, and I think there is enough room to squeeze it in there behind the back wall of the cockpit. The 4 inch right angle grinder is probably too big.

I truly hope this is the last of my core repairs! ( Still working on the warped rudder, too)

[dave]

I think that I would cut a "larger than you expect" access panel in the back of the cockpit, that just makes too much sense to me! That way you can access the inside transom skin, you WON"T be working in a confined space and you will have plenty of room and light to work with. Do a good job at cutting out the panel and you can just put some trim around it and reinstall as a permanent panel: no more grinding, glassing and gelcoat matching there! Heck, you could even mount that puppy on hinges and make an access door.

[Marionete]

. . . . or on a smaller scale, could install one of those 8 inch round screw in access plates like they use on catamaran hulls, etc.

Good idea! Less work than matching gel coat any day.

[dave]

The access port was my first though but I gave up on it as quickly as it came because the repair is ALWAYS BIGGER than that!

[Marionete]

Access port sizes are plentiful - doing a few searches on ebay, I found some pre-mfg round as big as 10 inches with an 8 1/4 cutout and then a few rectangular ones 7 X 11 and larger. Will probably opt for the 10 in round. Also did some research on the flat blade cutting tools - and Dremel just came out with one called a "multi-max" for $99 ; if you want one more solid, check out the Rockwell Sonicrafter. Both similar and less $$$ than the FEIN multimaster.

Will evacuate old wood and replace with Coosa 26 3/4 inch under both rudder gudgeons.

[dave]

I use an OLD Black and Decker saber saw with bi-metal blade. Cripes, I bought the darn thing over 24 years ago at Wallyworld and paid next to nothing for it and it just keeps on running1

[Marionete]

Can't use a jig saw unless you want to go through both layers of glass and the core unless you have another technique you'd like to share. Since I am peeling off just one layer of glass and core, I have come to rely on my 4 inch angle grinder, but it does make quite a dusty mess. After looking at the cost of the new high speed vibrating gizmos, went back to the angle grinder with a worn out cutting wheel and got it all out. Made cuts from the lower gudgeon all the way to the upper about 8 inches apart. The core was damp throughout, but was totally gone at the upper. Got a chunk of Coosa 3/4 inch that will work nicely to replace the old core, but will have to make a few slices to bow it a little before installing.

Letting the surrounding areas dry out using the hole drilling exercise and will close it all up in few days. Didn't need to cut a big hole in the cockpit as an access plate either. Less (holes ) is more.

In the process found out that the stb toe rail across the transom had NO CAULK whatsoever. Perhaps hull 23 was assembled in Poland?

[dave]

I meant a jig saw to cut through the COCKPIT aft wall so that you could access the transom from the inside and then NOT have to patch anything from the outside. The inside skin is much thinner and there's no gelcoat to match or other finishing work to speak of. That's still the way that I would do it, and will do it if that problem arises. Cripes............................... I think that's the only problem area on the boat that HASN'T shown up yet!!!!!!!!!!!!