38ft Top Gun, where are its structural weakness's, if any?
 

I'm just curious to see what kind of flaws one should be looking for when looking at any of the non-step top guns. Do you get a bunch of cosmetic spider cracks? How about the stringers and such, how do they hold up? What are the common weak points to check?

There was a thread a couple weeks ago about a boat called "pink flamingo". In the tread there was a brief discussion about some problems with some flat bottom guns. That is all I ever remember reading about in the way of structural concerns, and I am not sure there was ever any definitive answer on the problem.

Edit - Here's the Thread.

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...=pink+flamingo

I believe that was a carbon gun and almost all of them were redone.

I can tell you mine likes to bow the stainless rubrail and pop out the screws by the fairing when you play in the rough :)

Carl

Mine has some stress cracks in the cap but the boat was laid up light and was a race boat. The cap was also made completely of carbon fiber, not a carbon/kevlar mix. I don't think you'll find many problems with stress cracks on a normal production lay-up boat.

Never had any issues with my Carbon Fiber 97. Have had a lot of buddies who have had guns and no issues. Any issues that developed through time were due to the operator not the manufacturer.

I also had a cafe Racer. Great boat, no issues.

If you go into the cabin and you lift the bed up you can see the stringers sometime you will have stress cracks there

Did you say "structural weakness'" in a 38 Top gun?!

That's funny right there.

Anything can be broken. Cig is at the top of the list of toughness though. Stringers are the usual places as well as bulkhead tabbing-mostly forward. I'd be more concerned with rot- microbes can't tell if it's a Cig or a Bayliner.

Chris...Always the devils advocate...:D

In all seriousness though, the main point of the question was "any common weak points" and I'd have to say most definately not. I think all boats, depending on use, can get spyder cracks. I've never noticed any on our boat though.

And you're right, any boat can be mis-treated thus breaking. And that would be (was) my main concern when looking for a used Top Gun was water rot.

You're right- they don't usually break. If you see one broken, it was run HARD. At least once anyway.

On any offshore, the most common places you'll find damage are at the stringers in the middle third and the bulkheads in that same area.

On that topic...Have you actually ever seen a Top Gun with broken stringers or bulk head? Just wondering. I've seen a LOT of Top Guns come and go on the market and heard many stories about boats being run hard but have yet to hear or see one that was actually broken. In theory, anything is possible. I just wondered if theres actually one that comes to mind that has an interesting story behind it.

Ditto on two of my buddies guns. but the one is getting redone now and the stringers were fine . Kinda startled me at first when it did it on me during the Chicago poker run last year , thought that i really hurt his hull .

There was just one in the classifieds with massive damage to the hull/stringer junction that actually broke through.

I've seen 4 or 5 instances of tabbing on bulkheads, two instances where hull/deck tabbing had separated (one was mine) and a few minor stringer pops (again, one mine). The boat took a VERY hard hit/landing and the damage was minor. I thought I'd broken the boat in half- the hit probably would have done major damage to anything else. I've never seen one where the stringer fractured or the bulkhead broke or came loose. I've seen less spider-webbing on Cigs than any other brand that comes to mind.

that boat hit something submerged in the water.

top guns have no weakness silly boy.. only problem we have to deal with is all the outerlimits boys, it seems all their wives and girl friends want to get to know us better...

The biggest weakness in a Cig are the breakable humans in it...