new bolts on encapsulated lead keel Santa30

santana30 · #1 07-01-2007

I have cracks on my santana 30 keel , I grind the fiberglass and the cracks are in the lead also 2 foot from the bottom a horizontal crack a foot long and another one 3 foot up and forward.
it is an encapsulated lead keel, anyone knows if the bolts on this boat are J shaped, some mayor work is coming , but I will not give up.
I have think if the case is that the bolts are j shaped, to cut windows on it and replaced them. it is a 1974 old racer probably it had suffer alot of stress on his life, but the fiberglass still holding up good, with no blisters.
Any thoughts , if the lead is split on three it'll be just ok to put new bolts.
I was thinking to do it one by one (need to find how long the bolts are, hope they could give me that info at schock) cut a window ,cut the lup of the J and exchange the bolts and install a plate instead of the J put the lead back on the window and reglass.

danjarch · #2 07-01-2007

I wouldn't go to so much trouble. You could drill the bolts out from the top. Then over drill the hole. Then epoxy some stainless all thread into the hole. You'll want to spin the bolts backwards to force the epoxy down and the air out. I'd check with mas epoxies, they should have a metal to metal epoxy.

Sailormann · #3 07-02-2007

You could try emailing a company called Mars Keel and see if they have any suggestions. I would hesitate before cutting out the lead on one side of the keel bolts. It's going to be very difficult to get anything to adhere properly to the lead. Things may stick for a little while, but all of the expoxies will have different expansion rates than the metal, hence you are going to end up with separation at some point, and the keel may well just fall off.

If you have cracks, I would be tempted to try drilling holes and inserting bolts to hold the pieces together securely, and then filling in the holes with something to fair the keel.