Interior hull repair

patterbear · Post by **patterbear** » Sun May 04, 2008 3:01 am

Just picked up an original Mobile Adventure Prelude (Thanks Jim!) to add to the mess in my basement. The outer hull is in good shape, however there are a couple of small cracks in the inner hull towards the stern with some minor delamination. What is the best approach to repair these? Should injection of Gorilla Glue followed by a coat of ABS slurry be enough to stabilize these, or do I need to start cutting?

Thanks!

BTW: The hull shape is much flatter than the Pyranha -ahem- "improved" version. Can't wait to see how differently it handles!

ezwater · Post by **ezwater** » Thu May 08, 2008 12:48 am

Don't know enough about your boat material to answer. Royalex or a similar material?

Jim Michaud · Post by **Jim Michaud** » Thu May 08, 2008 2:04 pm

To repair internal cracks I cover the cracks with scrap raft material and glue it down with Vynabond. I got the scraps from a raft manufacturer's trash cans while visiting them a couple of years ago. I guess that you could use vinyl instead. The reason that I use this technique is that the boat remains flexible. I use to use Kevlar but the boat would always end up cracking along the edges of the Kevlar unless I covered the inside from one side all the way up the other side.

If you have delamination I would recommend injecting some Gorilla glue first.

Jim

ezwater · Post by **ezwater** » Thu May 08, 2008 3:24 pm

Jim, did you taper your Kevlar patches by using concentric patches, to avoid a transition zone in stiffness?

Jim Michaud · Post by **Jim Michaud** » Fri May 09, 2008 2:57 am

Jim, did you taper your Kevlar patches by using concentric patches, to avoid a transition zone in stiffness?

Yup, I sure did. But then again I'm a little rough on boats, wearing out one per year.

Jim