Nortech Delamination
 

Does anyone know of the cats that had issues with delamination. Was looking at 40 nortech, called the insurance company for a quote, they told me that no quote. They had to pay out on two Nortech cats so they won't insurance them any more. The insurance company also called Nortech and they wouldn't do anything as well. The point is it makes me leary to go with Nortech. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Going back quite a few years, an acquaintance had a 43 that delam'd on the bottom forward portion of one of the sponsons

I ran into similar issue when I started looking.


Maybe it is the boat, or the age, or the care of said boat, or it encountered an 'obstacle'?


Some of these hulls are either grandfathered into a policy and/or will have to go 'self-insured'....price that in when dealing.


I went new boat w/outboards, but it was not any easier and cost about the same (value of boat was more, so % was down--still not awesome).

Have you run your new boat? Looking forward to seeing it at the lake.
Joe

First I’ve ever heard of a nortech with delaminating issues. Interested to hear more input.

No. I only took the weeks off when it snows!

Was looking at a 40 roadster, found out the tunnel delaminated.

If insurance companies are taking this stand with Nortech’s, how the hell are they still insuring skaters when it’s just accepted that they need constant ongoing rot repairs??!!

:poopoo: ::party-smiley-004: here we go....

Joe

Same here, Nortech's are solid fiberglass/kevlar not sandwiched foam

You mind sharing which one?

The story keeps changing, personally I`ve never heard of a single delam issue.
The reason I was given Wozen doesnt insure Nortechs is because of the payout on the 4 engine one that sunk.
miilion plus payout . That`s what I was told by Mr. Insurance.

was it the red one from loto ? Was it repaired already

woah woah woah woah shhhhh. Watch it 🤪

that’s a lie lol. The cats are vinylester and foam core..
with a WHOLE LOT of core bond

I think I've seen more Nortech cats laying in the road than delaminated! Those things like to jump off trailers

I found the hard way about the construction


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...a529c7b5f5.jpg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...425c44536d.gif

I was given plenty of reasons why my boat could never be insured and how I needed to sell it and buy something newer. American Modern didn’t seem to have any issues.

Crazy to think boats need to be scraped because they are to old and can’t be insured.

Pretty hard to find newer used performance V’s. Other then a very few big HP outer limits and cigs.

Most stopped building them 09-10.

Is that bad?

vinylester is what you build a run of the mill boat out of. Foam core is trying to appease to the masses who are scared of the big scary rot word. And Core bond is basically a puddy that squishes the core and kinda sorta bonds it to the fiberglass…

if the core isn’t bedded into the laminate under vacuum with a wet bed of glass. Hard pass from me dog.

I will STICK with epoxy resin and vacuum bagging when given the choice. My Nor-Tech CC is solid lamination and is built incredibly well. My cats are foam core and epoxy. Do yourself a favor and visit some boat builders to see the vast difference in construction methods and materials that are used. "You will quickly learn how weight, strength, and cost are directly related". Chasing air voids, wet core, powdered core, or delamination issues after a boat is finished is a gut wrenching and expensive process.

Joe

I was looking at the blue one in Canada. Pretty boat

That looks like at least 1/2" of solid glass with extra foam behind it for more strength. Nortech v bottoms are all solid glass and Kevlar mix. don't see why they would do it different in their cats.
The hull sides are foam cored.

So I guess cigarette is run of the mill. Vinylester was always the the best choice until the epoxy craze. Epoxy may be lighter and stronger but has no flex like vinylester and will give you no warning of breaking until it's to late. Had a friends epoxy cat snap a stringer last year, sounded like a 2x4 breaking in half. Pros and cons to each. Almost all manufacturers use foam core now in the hull sides, bottoms and decks. Nortech does it old school and hand lays the bottoms with solid glass and kevlar mix. At least they do the v bottoms this way not sure about the cats. They were always more about quality than chasing light weight and speed.

Epoxy/carbon has no flex "very little" is a better term, and yes everything has a breaking point. E-glass is much more forgiving "flexible" but a rigid hull is the fastest hull. I have one of each in my mini fleet and we run them hard at the best proving grounds out there; LOTO weekends will expose the weak links.

Joe

I dont know what that means. Sounds good enough for me.:popcorn:​​​​​​​

You are confusing the resin with the fabric. Epoxy has the best elongation and fatigue properties. When used as the matrix with high modulus carbon, the failure mode is dominated by the carbon. For high bending moments, epoxy will outperform the vinylester which will outperform polyester. That said vinylester is not cheap and generally used on higher quality craft.

ND1

Sorry, to clarify mine isn’t a nortech but hearing an insurance place tell me that there’s no way anyone would ever insure it because it’s more than 10 years old and having a local agent run it through a company that I know plenty of people with high performance boats and it was good pending a survey made me really wonder about these heavy advertising agencies. On one of my other boats they were triple the price for the same coverage but with a higher deductible.

And yeah when I was being told that no one will insure anything more than 10 years old my thoughts were what there’s been 200 hp boats built in the last 10 years so how the f is that true.

I should have been more clear Epoxy/Carbon fiber. My bad

My guess is that the running surface is solid lamination and will not likely have lamination issues. Sounds like the tunnel and deck are balsa cored, (unitized construction), and would be the potential problem areas if there was to be one.

Joe

I don't have a dog in the fight, or any first-hand experience with NorTechs at all but, just a fun fact....

It is my understanding, from a model boating buddy (a tooling engineer for a large fiberglass molding company in Michigan) that carbon does not "wet out" with literally any resin. It does not bond with the resin, but is "encapsulated" (his term), and is always layered with glass or Aramid, or is vacuum bagged. I myself have seen it "float" when not blanketed with some other fabric. He also told me that the vast majority of failures such as cracking or delamination are the result of too much resin, regardless of type of resin or fabric material. The resin cracks, and the crack then propagates through the fabric. With proper layup, glass and Aramid (especially) are actually quite flexible and resilient to fatigue.

That said, I would have to think that NorTech has their lamination process pretty well sorted out.

Carry on....

Thanks. Brad.

Aramid :)
googled that to see what it is.

https://www.google.com/search?client...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Sutphen,

Yup. Kevlar and Nomex are trade names, like Lexan (polycarbonate) and Teflon (PTFE). We laymen tend to start using these trade names, instead of the compound name, and it can get confusing when someone uses a competitor's trade name. I try and use the compound name to avoid these confusions. Being a machining job shop, we see the compound name more often than we do trade names in the material blocks on prints for that very reason. It's just become habit. :rolleyes:

Thanks. Brad.

I don`t know how OL`s are made but you can feel small vibrations thruout the whole boat and when it hits waves it sounds hollow.
on a 52' OL you can feel the engines vibrate all the way in the front bed. not a little , a lot.
I didn`t like it at all.

Been in many spark plug wires since we where young. Yes, we were young once. :)

SB,

Didn't know that. :ernaehrung004:

Thanks. Brad.

I remember looking along the sides of the sponsons of a Skater and a Nor-Tech at Fastboats.com in Pompano Beach many years ago.

The epoxy Skater was straight while the vinylester Nor-Tech was wavy.

Nor-Tech cats were a ”good enough” ”value for money” play.

And that Skaters probably had to have new fuel tanks done because the ethanal ate through the old ones, and dozens of repairs for rotted balsa that just keeps coming. All the while, the Nor-tech just kept taking the abuse and never needed any of that......