I think I would be filling out this form every time I posted a new update on this thread...just to let them know...

http://www.formulaboats.com/contact/

You could also start a facebook thread and tag https://www.facebook.com/formulaboats in your posts...in case they missed the 'Contact' submission...

RR,

You should had left the "waffle" in your post....lol.

I can assure you they've been watching both threads....doing anything about it...NOT !!!!

Chris

The 'waffle' wasn't too bad, just thought it could be a bit of a harsh generalization.
Okay, it went something like this........

I've always liked Formula boats but after reading about the problems, I would never consider buying one.

RR

May be an interesting development on my end! Not sure the person that just reached out to me wants his involvement public or not but this could be huge for me! Stay tuned I will know more after my meeting at 10 am tomorrow.

Jon, Where's my PM response ?


CT

Chris I was at the shop all day. Check your PM's.

Ok so today takes me in yet another direction on this thing. The person that I got in touch with on Sunday works for Plexus. Turns out I could hit the plant with a rock from my new shop! He is one of their sales reps. Today he came to my shop and took a look at the boat. We talked at great length about what products that they may have that could help out with this repair. I hope I get all the info below correct we talked about an awful lot so I hope I get this accurate.

The product that I am going to be using is MA590. We choose the MA590 for it's long work time (90 min.), high tensile (2000-2500psi) and shear strength (1500-2200psi) and the fact that it should not get brittle over its life time. All of these specs should out perform what was used in 1999 when the boat was built. We also talked about the heat that can be generated by the reaction of some of the plexus products. It can reach very high temperatures in large amounts. This is something I had not considered but over 200 degrees is normal! We also talked about if the old age of the fiberglass was an issue with the bond. Other then the issue of trying to get it as clean as possible the age is not an issue and in fact it sounded like it could be a good thing. I am going to run some tests on some of the sections that I have removed. One will be uncleaned and as dirty as it is when it came out of the boat. The other will be one that I use a cleaner like Acetone to wipe it down. The last will be totally cleaning and grinding it down.

So the plan is this. I plan to take out the sections like I did on the port side. I will leave about 1-1.5 inches of the bottom of the liner were it comes out on the boat. I will remove as much of the old Plexus from the bottom as I can. I will then take the MA590 and push that between the bottom of the boat and the 1.5" section of the stringer that is left. This should give me plenty of bonding surface. This will cure the issue were Formula seemed to miss (no support under the stringers). I will now have 100% support under the grid were I currently have none. Last I will make a core for between the stringers and glass that in. Paint and hopefully put this nightmare behind me!

Clearly Dave's approach with Chris's boat and my boat are going to be fixed in two completely different ways. Dave is going old school and there is no question that his approach is going to work and be super strong. His approach in my opinion is a VAST improvement over what Formula ever intended to be done. My approach is to look at why the boat failed and use new technology to put the boat back together. IMO this was not a failure caused by product but more so by procedure. In this case I think that who ever engineered the boat intended for Plexus to be all the way under the stringer. I think that they intended for the space between the bottom of the boat and the liner to be 100% filled. My boat was so far from this it is not funny. My hope is that if I fill the space up to the stringer with the Plexus and then make a core (similar to what Dave did on Chis's boat) it will be as strong as what the original engineers intended it to be, maybe even stronger! Lets face it with the very poor construction that was done it lasted 15 years. IMO it will last forever now. I wish I had Dave's expertise in working with glass but I don't. I am confident that the technology approach will yield me a long lasting repair.

I think you will be fine, its not the liner but the way it was installed. Had it been done correctly it would not have cracked.

That's assuming the liner was designed properly from the getgo......looking at some of the gaps in Johns boat (like in post 65 at the bottom) it looks like the liner doesn't follow the contours of the bots hull very good......its possible they may have made changes to the hulls bottom and I'm guessing some engineer thought there wasn't enough of a change to warrant a design change in the liner???...figuring the plexus would just fill the gaps (that's assuming they used enough of it from the start....
Only other way i can see the liner being installed with such big gaps under some areas was if the liner was twisted/tweaked coming out of the molds before installation into the hull. I wonder if Formula installs the liner into the hull when its still in the mold.....I've taken the factory tour many years back and dont remember.....but if they made the plug for the liner/grid system while the hull was still in the mold but are installing them after pulling the hull out of the molds then that could possibly explain a few things on why they are not sitting right! I know a few builders that don't remove the hulls from the molds until the stringers are installed to keep the hull as "straight" as possibly while everything cures in place...

I don't know if this matters but the formula brochure says the liner/ grid system is suspended in hull. It does not say it is attached. Suspended ,what ever that means ????? Jeff Wurl