Three Years Too Late!

Alex, my buddy at work, is great at finding great stuff on Craigslist. Cars, tools, materials, you name it, Alex seems to find great deals on it. He checks out all of the different Craigslist cities and I am always amazed at what he finds. Yesterday he sent me a link to a Craigslist ad for a BMW marine diesel D12 for $500 in San Francisco area. The same as the original engine in Something Else. If Alex could have found this three years ago I would have bought it. I am 80 percent done with my Yanmar installation, there is NO way I’m going to go back to the old engine.

I sent the ad to Rich with V12 engineering. It looks like the engine is sold today. Rich gave me $325 for parts off my old engine.

Thanks Alex, and search on my friend... search on!

My old rusted out BMW D12 head.  My finger are going from the exhaust port into the water jacket.

How thick is your gelcoat?

I've been thinking about something else. How thick is your gelcoat? In fiberglass construction gelcoat is like a hard thick paint applied to the inside of the mold and then covered with fiberglass. When the part is removed from the mold the gelcoat is the smooth shiny s surface everybody sees. The fiberglass provides all the strength while the gelcoat provides the beauty. The gelcoat on boats is usually white however it doesn’t have to be. The gelcoat on a Chevy Corvette is the color the car. I’ve read the maximum thickness of gelcoat should be 35 mills, (1mm).

I have “core samples” that were left in the nav station drawer by the prior owner. I have one that looks like the cutout for the speed transducer. I would estimate the thickness of the fiberglass to be about 7mm while the gelcoat thickness is about 9mm. I have another sample from my transom and it looks like the fiberglass is 2mm and the gelcoat is 2 mm. Finally I have a sample from my deck and it looks like the fiberglass is maybe 0.5mm and the gelcoat is 3 mm.



Hull sample, white gelcoat on top fiberglass on bottom

 


Transom sample, white gelcoat on the bottom, fiberglass on top



Is this excess gelcoat? Was this a quality control problem? Does it matter; after all it is a 35 year old boat?   I ask because on old boats many people grind off the underwater portion of gelcoat and apply an epoxy barrier coat to prevent blisters. The gelcoat is ground off because epoxy does not stick well to it. When I did my bottom paint in 2010 Something Else had a few blisters. I ponder if I should just treat any new blisters locally or something else.