1975 Ericson 27

Strut Cracks

Much to my chagrin, I discovered cracks around the propeller strut in the hull. I did some research and determined that the hull in this area is not providing any structural support to the strut, but merely is a shell around it. The strut is bolted to a fiberglass "box" up inside the hull, and there is a dead area that gets packed with filler, and then the skin of the hull. With this knowledge, I decided to repair the cracks without removing the strut. The strut is completely solid and exhibits no signs of movement. The solution I used was to deeply grind the cracks with a wire wheel and then fill them with a peanut butter consistency mixture of Cab-O-Sil and West epoxy. After doing this, I had the local marina do the final fairing (EPA constraints have led to this). I don't have pictures with paint, but after bottom painting, there was virtually no sign of the repair.

As part of servicing the strut, I also replaced the bearing and installed a new Aquamatt 22 stainless steel shaft. The old bearing was completely frozen in the strut. To remove it I cut it in pieces, lengthwise, with a hacksaw blade. It was also necessary to tap out the holes in the strut for the bearing set screws to the next size up.


You can see the cracks as dark lines		Grind and ouch, grind	filling with Cab-O-Sil and epoxy
		final fairing done by marina note new shaft also
	Strut Bearing pieces

Home Page | Links | Projects | Atomic 4 Repower | Back

Last update: 5/8/04