Also if you look close in the picture you can see that the plexus is FULL of air bubbles. I will try and get in touch with my contact there and see what may have caused that at some point. Not sure if that is normal or not. Even where it was full of bubbles it was still very hard. I assume it was when the reaction took place and the space was larger then it should be the plexus got hot when it cured and made the bubbles?

What were you shaving with the planer, the old Plexus or the gel or stringers, or foam or ????

Jon, You already know this answer... Stop attempting to configure reasoning for their production failure....???? fix is to fill the gaps and get a full fill so there is no deflection within the lower liner / hull portion...or build a full liner as Dave did in my boat...Just fill in the gaps brother and get a tight fit...or it will fail again.....

Chart I am shaving away the plexus that was between the hull halves. On this side there was only about 50% of what should have been in there. So it was not so bad. The other side is a lot better but not great either. I am concerned about taking away to much material so I am going to bond the bottom to the stringers on the port side before I take any more apart on the starboard side.

Hey - Big time newbie here on this forum.

I'm about to buy a 1998 353 fastech and ran across this information last night. Serious buzz killer, and I was no doubt buzzing last night. My fear is even if I see no liner cracks by engine mounts, or the bilge, or on the outside hull, and it is solid rather than hollow sounding am I set up for a latent defect? It is going to be pretty hard to see much with 502's in the way. I have not yet seen the boat as it is a 6 hour drive, I'll be making the drive soon. Advice?? This is so unexpected out of Formula, I had a 32 PC, and a 280 SS, both great. I guess I'm not slowing down, I'm trying to speed things up a bit! The boat should handle rough water no doubt, but it seems to me if it has not seen it much in life this problem may not manifest itself until it does. I run the St. Croix in MN.

Let r buck, Just pint out the two threads or send the surveyor links to the threads and ask them to review them. I still feel like the problem was that the hull and liner on both our boats had a larger space then they are supposed to have. Then the guys on the floor are told to put in X amount of Plexus. When that space is larger then it is supposed to be then you don't fill the space. It would be nice if they had some sort of inspection processes in place to make sure that the plexus got under the stringers such as a scope into the inspection holes or something like that. I don't know maybe they do that now. Bottom line is that if you have a good surveyor and they know about the issue your likely to find the problem if it exists.

OK today I took the time to set up my test strips. The idea with this is to do a best to worst case scenario that the Plexus could be dealing with (other then water). I have two pieces with a LOT of oil on them, two pieces with foam on one side and splintered glass on the other, last is two pieces that I sanded and cleaned.

This is the the pieces with oil on them. These came out of the bottom of the bilge so I don't see it getting any worse then this.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555558[/ATTACH]

This piece has foam on it and represents some of the areas that I may have under the stringers. Some one (factory or former owner trying to fix this problem) put foam into my boat. Chris's boat did not have foam in the stringers. Not sure why the two boats are different.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555559[/ATTACH]

This is a piece of glass that splintered when I took it out of the boat.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555560[/ATTACH]

This is the three pieces ready for testing. I spaced them out aprox the way that it is spaced in the boat. I used screws to keep them spaced away and not move while the plexus dries.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555561[/ATTACH]

This is the sanded piece with the plexus added.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555562[/ATTACH]

Oil pieces with plexus
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555563[/ATTACH]

Foam pieces with plexus
[ATTACH=CONFIG]555564[/ATTACH]

Again this all represents a worst case other then the sanded pieces. If all these piece pull material apart when I go to break them then I am a super happy camper. If they do not then I have some more tests to run. The work time on the Plexus is 90 min. give or take depending on temperature. The fixture time is 250-380 min Best I can tell the total cure time is 800 min or around 13 hours. So tick toc we wait!

I will get pictures of my test results later. Basically the oily parts held well but not good enough for my liking. The Plexus reacted with the foam and did not harden, that one scares me a little bit. The part that I sanded had a great bond and the lamination broke well up inside the layers. That makes me feel comfortable that the plexus was cross linking into the old glass. So I will have to be very careful to get things as clean as I possibly can.

Don't mean to hi jack or derail the thread but does anyone know why formula do lay ups this way? Is it for aesthetics? Is it cheaper? Both? Why not do it the old school way with just fiberglass and core material. Why are they trying to get fancy with a floating grid and plexus. Obviously there process is inconsistent and not repeatable. Hopefully you get yours straightened out. Good luck

Thanks!

I was thinking the same thing regarding inspection, what can be seen with a inspection scope through the plugs? Is the drain plug in the back below the liner? Could you look in there and see the potential gaps?

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pro...4f9faa_400.jpg