I have a pretty good leak somewhere in the middle of my boat  . I have a 79 charger mini day and my bilge came on every hour this weekend while it was sitting in the river . Not Gushing in but a steady trickle ...... I was planning on gel coating the boat this winter and really dont want to pull my subfloor and interior before summer, Could I get under the boat and try to locate the hole and fill it with 3m marine silicone???  I know its a hole because the retard who owned the boat before me decided to use 2 1/2 tech screws to secure the seats . Thanks

pull the interior out and sit it in the water on the trailer and find out where the leak is coming from.  worst case drill it clean and epoxy glass in a plug, sand it smooth on both sides and do a little touch up gel.  dont wait or else you'll have to deal with water damage problems.  =)

I say do it right the first time  Here's my reason: After your fix seems to hold and get you through the remainder of the season, you might say screw it i'll run it another season, and in the mean time you are fatiguing "possibly" an area of a boat, and then something bad could happen...obviously you bought the boat from someone that did some hull damage, and just gave you their headache...i would fix it right the first time! you might miss 2 weekends of boating because of it, but that is like money in the bank, when you know it will hold, and fixed right!!!

Problem is i have a sub floor , and I wont be able to see where the leak is coming without pulling that out and the foam in between the stringers...... dammit !!!!

chances are if you have a subfloor with foam under it, its already rotten if theres a hole in the hull...  have u tried tapping around with a hammer and listening for dull spots?

Well not wanting to do anything half ass I pulled all the interior , and I found a Few holes that looked to be where the water was coming in . i poked around with a screwdriver to look for soft or rotten spots, but didnt find any  , so whats the next step do I start tearing out the fiberglass ?? Here some pics

heres what i did.  i started out with a dremel, figuring it was pretty easy to handle... but it just didnt have the balls to cut through the fiberglass to release the floor.  so i switched up to a 4" angle grinder.



cut out the floor, pulled all of the rotten foam and wood, cleaned it all up.  cleaned up all the edges, corners, and about 4" outwards with a sander where the new wood floor would sit so new glass would stick.



cut new floor from i think it was 5/8" plywood.  i made sure to cut it VERY snug.  then i pulled em all out and coated them all in a thin coat of resin to waterproof em.  put down some epoxy into the channel where they sit in the hull and dropped em into place, put a bunch of heavy stuff on top of em.  lastly i mixed up some resin with a little hardener, enough to give me some time to work with it.  put down some glass mat and glassed down the entire floor, and outwards to the hull 4".  then once i got everything coated i whipped up a hot batch of resin and layed it down quickly.  it kicked VERY fast and the floor is SOLID.  slapped down some carpet and good to go for a few more seasons.

So I dont need to replace the foam??

Leave the foam out.

After Pulling the interior , and weighing my 50 hour work weeks , I decided to have a shop do it . I really wanted to do it as I have worked with fiberglass alot when i raced a Class 7 truck . The guy quoted me a grand worst case scenario if he has to replace some stringers .I will stop by tomorrow after work and see what the damage looks like after the floors up . And i will post pics of progress. Thanks

Just my .02.............have the fuel tanks pressure checked as well.......might not have only been water in the bilge or soaked up in the foam......

Ray

well Received my boat back today and was extremely happy with the work and quality , and fast turn around ...... spent most of the day re mounting the interior and making some changes . If any one is in the High Desert of so cal I have a great Interior and gel coat guy in hesperia to recommend