Newport 27 Thru-hulls and Gate Valves

[jimmiebuchanan]

I have an early 70s Newport 27 with all gate valves (most of them plastic). I want to replace them with some of those Marelon ball valves. I was basically wondering if anyone had done this to this particular boat and how it went. Where the old ones hard to get off? Any spinning of the Thru-Hull? Did the Marelon fit properly? Also, does anyone know if this particular model of boat is known to have quality Thru-Hulls? Is the hull thick and solid or is it a cored hull? I'm pretty clueless in regards to most of this stuff, so feel free to straighten me out on anything or to oversimplify any advice. Thanks.

[Chris19602]

I changed all of mine to Marelon while in the water. It went without a hitch, just backed the old ones to the last thread, cleaned them up with a brass toothbrush and taped the threads with teflon tape. Then did a real quick change with my hand over the ocean while I switched over to the new valve. None of them leak and I managed to get rid of several PVC valves put in by a PO.

[KeelHaulin]

Just wanted to mention; you should not mix marelon with bronze by topping a bronze thru-hull with a marelon valve. The problem with this is that the bronze is a harder material and less flexible than the marelon and will put excessive tensile stress on the plastic when bolted together. If you replace the plastic gates with ball valves you should use bronze valves.

Putting a plastic male fitting into a metal female fitting is OK because the stress on the plastic is compressive and will not lead to cracking of the plastic.

[russ1302]

What type of thru hulls does the newport 27 have? Are they Mushroom style heads, or beveled countersink style. I'm going to haul my boat in a couple weeks and would like to have all my parts on hand before it happens, so I can order everything and save some money.

Thanks
Russ

[SVCetacea]

Originally Posted by jimmiebuchanan

I have an early 70s Newport 27 with all gate valves (most of them plastic).

I have a 1974 Newport 30 with the same plastic gate valves. Scary!
Looking to change them as well, so anyone who has done it?

[russ1302]

I replaced my valves with Conbraco bronze ball valves on my N27. My plastic valves had cracks at the threads. I did it by unscrewing the plastic valves until they where on the last couple threads of the thru hull. Then I cleaned the threads, rapped with teflon tape and did the old quick swap. It was pretty easy, but I think I may need the replace the thruhulls when I haul the boat, because my bedding blocks have rotted from water leaking in from the cockpit.

[jimmiebuchanan]

So, I ended up just changing all the valves out in the water, no big deal. One of them (the output from the head 1 1/4") was even too close to a fiberglass wall structure to allow it to spin all the way around. So I disassembled it as water was coming in, unscrewed it, and put on the new one. Maybe 5 gallons of water came in. Hard to tell because the bilge pump made it a non-issue. This job was no big deal in the end. I would say make sure you have everything really ready to go before you start and you will be fine. I was able to plug most of them with my thumb while the old valve was off.

[AjariBonten]

Halekai did a fabulous post about changing thru hulls, try searching for that.

I'll try to link to the post

Here it is:

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-m...based-how.html

or even better, his article on the job :

Replacing Thru-Hulls and Seacocks Photo Gallery by Maine Sailing at pbase.com

[WallyCorrigan]

My Newport 27 also has the dreaded gate valves, with some sort of white sealant all over everything. Any ideas what the sealant might be? For those who've changed out the gate valves in the N-27, are the through-hulls plastic or bronze? I'm looking at doing this for all my gate valves this winter. Thanks.