Soft Transom and Stringers
 

I believe my question has a "politically correct" answer and a "what would you do if it was you answer".

So, you are at the gas station spending the next 40 minutes pumping a couple hundred gallons of gas in your boat and a fellow boat admirer walks over and starts checking out your boat while chatting. He happens to tap on your transom casually while chatting and loading up the gas and then he stops and intentionally taps a few more times. He looks up and says, bud, you know your transom is going soft don't ya? Your confused looks leads him to show you how tone triggered by his tapping shifts at certain points on the transom. He says. dude you are wet, better get someone to look at that. Besides thinking this is the most expensive tank of gas ever, the question isn't if the transom and likely stringers will need to get pulled and replaced.

Now here is the question, how long can you go before taking on this repair? I suspect the politically correct answer is you should do it right away, it presents a "clear and present danger". I suspect the "what would you do if it happened to you" would likely be "i'll keep an eye on it and be cool with the boat till I can afford to get it fixed. Or maybe it would be "I'll get it done over the winter"?

I'm curious, I also suspect there are factors at play that drive the urgency of getting this fixed and I'm curious what those are? Things that come to mind are how you use the boat; are you running at higher speeds? do you spend an above average amount of time in the air? do you stomp on the gas at every opportunity? do your friends refuse to ride with you because you scare them? does your boat look like it has parts dangling loose? ...

Lastly, are boats these days less dependent on wooden transom and stringers? I see the need for them in the past, but we have come a long way in terms of making very strong and element proof materials that should essentially eliminate soft/rot as an issue (unless soft is caused by glasswork itself and the wood is fine? is that common?) and only add additional strength to hulls.

Stand/bounce on the drives and trim tabs and see if you get any movement. If not, wait until winter. That is my opinion. I wouldn't go wave crushing it either but you can at least enjoy the summer. It isn't as big of a deal as people think. If you are handy and can pull everything/reinstall everything yourself, you are looking at 3500-4500 for glass work. The problem is when you start doing the.......well, I should go ahead and fix this, and this, and this:)

pretty much sums it up. Its tough to establish a "time to failure" guideline there really are just to many factors. If its a Bravo boat you will start to wipe out couplers when they get really rotted. I ran my Scarab III for two years till i put a transom in it and it was pretty bad . . . . and i know a guy that does that kinda work lol. If you can get a look at the cutout edge and do the bounce test you can get a good idea of just how far along it is. I would suspect half the boats out there running merrily along are in dire need of a transom and the owners will never know it . . . . .

If you are talking about the Monza (which didn't hold that much gas so I'm hoping not) it doesn't even have "stringers" so to speak, just fiberglass boxes and the transoms were made from "iron wood" and almost never rot. And if its a Volvo Penta that motor can sit in there sideway it wouldn't matter. If it's not the Monza and Volvo the folks above have good advice.

If someone at a gas station came up and started knuckle banging the back of my boat, We would have a problem that didn't involve the transom or stringers. :duel:

it's not the monza, it is a prospective 2nd boat.

How much $ per post ?

Well then it had better have just gotten a lot cheaper.......

Run! and don't look back. It would have to be something very special to ever make me consider going through all that work again.

If the guy at the gas station is right you owe him a case of beer btw.

Did the guy at the station have a friend or know a guy that can fix you up ? Sounds really fishy that he walks up out o f the blue and starts banging on the boat . Maybe he's seen a lot of this particular boat with issues, more than likely he's looking for a payday!