mounting new deckplates

[MScott]

I have heard that it is advised to take the shorter screws from the old cunningham cleat and use them to screw down the NEW fairlead plate and take the longer screws from the old cunn. fairlead and use them on the NEW outhaul/cunn. cleat base.

Is this everyone's experience, or should one just use new longer screws for both?

my follow up question to that is: isn't the backing plate for the shorter screw only tapped to the depth of the old screws? Assuming its made of wood, you run the risk of splitting it as you drive a long screw in. This, I assume is very bad.

thanks in advance for your help.

Scott

 

[Rob B]

That's what I did with mine. No one told me to do it that way, but it just made sense when I was looking at them.

 

[GeoffS]

My boat had seen may mods before I installed the new deck hardware this spring, and both sets of screws holding down the old-style fittings were quite long (ca. 1 1/2" or 40mm). I'm guessing that even the short screws you had were long enough to go completely through the plywood core under the hardware and into the open part of the hull. The deck is only about 1/2" thick (maybe a bit more under the hardware). Perhaps Mr. Kirkpatrick could shed some light on what's under/inside the deck.

You could check the hole depth by trying to stick a thin piece of wire or a small drill-bit through the hole and see if you hit bottom. If you have an inspection port nearby you could reach underneath and see/feel if there is anything sticking through.

If you decide to use longer screws in a shallow hole, I'll bet that you can just drill a deeper pilot hole. I'd want to check to make sure there's nothing unexpected underneath (inspection port) unless I had really good information that it was OK.

FWIW, I was going to go nuts and fill my old screw holes with epoxy and then redrill them after the epoxy hardened, but impatience won out and I just squirted a bit of 3M 5200 into the hole and some silcone under the parts and screwed everything down. So far (3 months) , everything is still tight.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

 

[Rob B]

5200 is the duct tape of sealers. The first thing I do to every used boat I've owned,(including lasers) is pull all of the old deck fitting off, let the boat sit open w/o deck fittings in my garage for a week then go back and reseat everything in 5200. I've never experienced a leak problem.

 

[GeoffS]

I was curious about what's under the deck at the block plate and cleat, so after racing tonite I stuck my camera into the inspection port and took a couple of photos of the two areas. The photos aren't very good, but they pretty clearly show all the screws sticking through the lower deck skin (by quite a bit!). They also show that the deck is not any thicker where the foam core is replaced by plywood to hold the screws.

Cheers,

Geoff S.