..... on our 1999 H310 is one of my endless winter projects.
Has anyone ever done this on a Hunter where the stanchions are attached by bolting into buried, threaded backing plates ? These backing plates are 3/8 aluminum plate which are buried in the wet fiberglass while the boat is under construction rather than using
through bolts and a backing plate under the deck. This makes for easy construction and doesn't require interior access holes to get to the nuts. When installing the hardware, a snug hole is drilled through the surface glass and aluminum plate and a SS machine screw cuts its own thread into the aluminum. No nuts and no interior backing plate required.
So much for the history ............. it's now 14 years later and I'm starting to worry about how well the two screws you see on the deck are sealed against water ingress. I'm not too worried about the two machine screws in the toe rail as it's made of solid fiberglass. The deck is probably plywood and subject to problems.
I recently re-bedded a leaking forward cleat which was bolted to a buried backing plate in the toe rail. The 5/16 machine screws looked like spaghetti when they finally came out. I felt like spaghetti when they finally came out.
New machine screws were not going to go back into the buried backing plate without a battle. In this case, I was able to drill through the buried backing plate and through bolt with new machine screws, nuts, and backing plate.
Please share your experiences ......................... try to re-bed them and perhaps make matters worse or get religious and pray they'll last for the next thirty years without water ingress ?
Has anyone ever done this on a Hunter where the stanchions are attached by bolting into buried, threaded backing plates ? These backing plates are 3/8 aluminum plate which are buried in the wet fiberglass while the boat is under construction rather than using
through bolts and a backing plate under the deck. This makes for easy construction and doesn't require interior access holes to get to the nuts. When installing the hardware, a snug hole is drilled through the surface glass and aluminum plate and a SS machine screw cuts its own thread into the aluminum. No nuts and no interior backing plate required.
So much for the history ............. it's now 14 years later and I'm starting to worry about how well the two screws you see on the deck are sealed against water ingress. I'm not too worried about the two machine screws in the toe rail as it's made of solid fiberglass. The deck is probably plywood and subject to problems.
I recently re-bedded a leaking forward cleat which was bolted to a buried backing plate in the toe rail. The 5/16 machine screws looked like spaghetti when they finally came out. I felt like spaghetti when they finally came out.
New machine screws were not going to go back into the buried backing plate without a battle. In this case, I was able to drill through the buried backing plate and through bolt with new machine screws, nuts, and backing plate.Please share your experiences ......................... try to re-bed them and perhaps make matters worse or get religious and pray they'll last for the next thirty years without water ingress ?
