russ

In the process of installing my Victory trim tabs on my Baja 252 islander.
Well I drilled the holes to mount the tabs and in just one hole water started comming out but not a lot. But nothing came out of any of the other holes that where lower or higher than that one. It did the same thing on the other side to.

Has anyone else ever ran into this? And I checked I know I didn't drill into anything.

Russ

Wobble

Is it a wood filled transom, if so were the wood chips wet when you were drilling?. If thats the case you are looking at having to redo the transom. If your transom is foam filled, then it's no big deal except that you need to find where the water is getting in. Likely places are the Gimbel housing, drain plug and swim step if you have one.

Good luck

Perfectmix

That doesn't sound good. Better get it checked out before you go any farther. Good luck!

Steve Zuckerman

Russ,
A friend of mine was installing hydraulic steering rams on his H2X, and found water in his transom too. I had an H2X at the time and was concerned about mine, so I started looking at all the through the transom fittings and lines. I was surprised to see how poorly the tab hydraulic lines were sealed. I took everything off mine except the drive, which was sealed OK, and siliconed the hell out of everything.
What had happened to my friend's boat, which was equally poorly sealed, was that he had kept his in a slip over the weekend several times. I usually pulled my boat out.
You may have caught yours early enough to prevent having the transom replaced. I hope so for your sake. I suggest you have a good fiberglass shop check it out, and give their opinion. OH YEAH, buy a big tube of marine grade silicone and seal everything on your transom when you're done, because the factory didn't in our cases.
Regards,
Steve

Cord

iTrader: (2)

You have water in your coring. This is very bad. If it's a foam core, the core won't rot, but the boat will be heavy and not perform well. If it's a wood core, the core will rot resulting in a structural failure. Either way, it needs to be fixed. With a transom they'll pull the engine and cut the inner layer of glass out. Then they'll remove all of the saturated coring. Replace the core, reglass the transom and remount the hardware. As you can tell, there is a lot of labor involved in this. It's going to get very expensive very quickly and you won't get a accurate quote until they start cutting the boat apart.

russ

Why would water only come out of one hole. The holes run down the V in a straight line. The one below it didn't leak and the shavings that came out of the other holes wasn't wet.

Russ

Wobble

do you have a tie down hook or some other item mounted near where the water came out?

RUSSSR1

You mstill did not say if the chips from the wet holes were wet. If not look where the hole came through in the bildge if it is just to the high side of a stringer you might have just drilled into standing water in the blidge. This would also explaine why it was the same on both sides. When I put a hole through a transom I will mix some resin, thin it out and saturate the core thruogh the hole. I like 3M 5200 to seal every thing although it can make things a pain to get apart albeit I would rather fight hardwear than replace a transom.

russ

From what I could tell is the chips from the holes where water came out were wet. None of the others. The closest thing that water could have gotten into the transom is 18 inches away.

Good thing is the Hull is covered under warranty and I have contacted BAJA already. They told me to take it to the BAJA dealer ship to have it looked at.

Cord

iTrader: (2)

Then the entire transom is not wet, just a select area. Doesn't change the scope of work, it's just a smaller area that needs to be repaired.