Engine compartment Stringers 89 Panther
 

Has anyone had a problem with 88-90 Panther Stringers cracking? They are not very stought to begin with! Not wet, just cracked! They don't look heavy enough to begin with! I was thinking of taking out conpletely, glassing/ bedding in 5/8" marine plywood and adding 2.5" stringers on top. The other problem is it appears that there isn't a lot of room from the bottom of the bilge to the oil pans! Looking for fixes.

do you mean you want to glass plywood as a core on the bilge floor and then put stringers on top of that? if so definetly don't do that, if you want a stable core you will need baltek or divinycell or something along those lines.


what do you mean there is a lot of room between the bottom and the oil pan? this distance is directly related to X dimension and fairly irrelevant to everything else. there really is no proper or set distance here.

What I meant is there isn't a lot of room. Although I don't think it's as tight as I said. I actually took a couple of pics before I pulled the motors and I do have some room. That being said, there isn't any sign of a problem on the outside of the hull, it's strickly the stringers. What would be your approach to fixing the hull ?

gotcha' yea i think most are about the same as far as room under the motor. X dims are generally within a certain range so its kinda dictated.


Stringers are far easier to just surgically remove and replace then ryng to repair most times plus you have better control over results. I would zip them out with a multi tool and pop some new ones in made of laminated 3/4 glassed in with three or four layers of 1708.

Thanks Dave. The bilge is all cleaned up and hardware stripped. I'm going to exactly what you just said, but make them a little more "stout" than what was there!